TO his followers he was Brotherly Leader and Guide Of The Revolution, a man who transformed Libya into the most prosperous country in Africa and provided free education and health care for his people.
To his opponents he was the “mad dog of the Middle East”, a dangerous and unpredictable dictator who supplied weapons to the IRA and other terrorist groups and whose government was behind the horrific bombing of a Pan Am passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.……..
This time last year, Gaddafi must have been confident of seeing out his final years in power in the luxury lifestyle to which he was accustomed. But the so-called Arab spring, which began in Tunisia in January and which spread to neighbouring Libya soon afterwards, was to prove his downfall.
Although many Libyans stayed loyal to him, Gaddafi could not have expected the scale of popular revolt against his rule or that the Western powers he regarded as his new allies would decide to intervene militarily on the rebels’ behalf.
You can read the whole of my Daily Express piece on the late Libyan leader, here.
12 comments:
To which one would add only a few points.
First, no serious person, by definition, thinks that Libya had anything to do with Lockerbie, although one appreciates the hoops through which a freelance must jump in order to be published in the Express.
Secondly, the Americans were arming the IRA at exactly the same time as Gaddafi was, and, moreover, they were throwing almost incomparably more political weight behind that organisation, to incomparably more eventual effect.
Thirdly, the present Coalition was as bad as Blair for sucking up to Gadaffi.
And fourthly, the synthesis of Islamism and what passes for Socialism in lands unblessed by the synthesis of Radical Liberalism, Tory Populism, Christian Socialism, Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism, and other such entirely non-Marxist influences, is in fact the position of numerous individual and collective seceders to David Cameron's Conservative Party, one of whom is now a rising star of the 2010 intake to the House of Commons.
To be fair to Gadaffi the western terrorist plots attributed to him are largely regarded as being falsely attributed to him like Lockerbie with allegations of planted evidence.
Given Libya’s relatively comfortable lifestyle economically at least I thought Gadaffi has core support in urban areas away from the tribal regions but apparently not given how easy Tripoli fell and the mass celebration on news of his death.
I confess to not knowing very much about Libya, but it's my understanding that Libya is a multi-tribal society, where tribal loyalties play a significant role.
I grasp that what took place in Libya was a "preference cascade," when people who feared Gaddafi and his loyalists (he may have not had all that many loyalists), realized at a certain point that they could support the rebellion without getting killed.
Here's where I've first seen the mention of a preference cascade.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030910002544/http://www.techcentralstation.com/031302A.html
Hard to see the Libyan events as anything other than a neo-colonialist takeover by Britain and France who have form in this kind of thing e.g. Suez when their intervention was similarly to bring peace and to prevent one lot killing off the other lot.At least with Suez ,the Leader of the Labour Party opposed it .
Hard to see the Libyan events as anything other than a neo-colonialist takeover by Britain and France who have form in this kind of thing e.g. Suez when their intervention was similarly to bring peace and to prevent one lot killing off the other lot.At least with Suez ,the Leader of the Labour Party opposed it .
Hard to see the Libyan events as anything other than a neo-colonialist takeover by Britain and France who have form in this kind of thing e.g. Suez when their intervention was similarly to bring peace and to prevent one lot killing off the other lot.At least with Suez ,the Leader of the Labour Party opposed it .
I have to say while I think bombing Libya was a grave mistake, especially because Libya gave up its nuclear program, I don't feel sympathy for his death. I have heard and read too many stories of how he and his family lived in wealth while his people suffered.
Of course, now it seems Sharia law will take foothold in Libya, and that can't be good for anyone.
16 Things Libya Will Never See Again...
1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
3. Having a home considered a human right in Libya.
4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 dinar (U.S.$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25 percent of Libyans were literate. Today, the figure is 83 percent.
6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kickstart their farms are all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need, the government funds them to go abroad, for it is not only paid for, but they get a U.S.$2,300/month for accommodation and car allowance.
8. If a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidizes 50 percent of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amounting to $150 billion are now frozen globally.
11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession, as if he or she is employed, until employment is found.
12. A portion of every Libyan oil sale is credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gives birth to a child receive U.S.$5,000.
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $0.15.
15. 25 percent of Libyans have a university degree.
16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Manmade River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
popular revolt? You must be referring to NATO and its foreign imported mercenaries. Tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries have bee brought in by NATO from Qatar, Egypt Tunisia..Those are many of the 'rebels' we keep heaing about.
A phone call was hacked into and it revealed:
'A dispute over the weapons & “troops” or “mercenaries” from Qatar. “Where are the weapons from Qatar, where are the troops when we need them?”, says the Misurati rebel'
http://mylogicoftruth.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/video-phone-call-dispute-between-misurati-rebel-leader-and-the-ntcs-military-spokesman-colonel-ahmed-bani-mmmhh/
Brian
terror plots attributed to Gadafi? lets take a look?
The Libyan “Hit Squad” Hoax
By Andrew I. Killgore
Soon after President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, breathless articles about Libyan “hit [assassination] squads” began to occupy the front page of The Washington Post . For three weeks, Post readers—and the U.S. government—were obsessed with these squads, which reportedly originated in the Middle East, had reached Europe, and were currently in Canada, where they were poised to cross into the United States like a swarm of northern killer bees.
Just how a group of supposed assassins could be so easily tracked made the hit squad story ridiculous on its face. Suddenly, however, heavy concrete barriers surrounded the White House, Capitol Hill and the Department of State—where they remain today.
The hoax began to collapse when The Post assigned names to police-style composite drawings of the “assassins.” Arabic-language specialists recognized the names as those generally used by Shi’i Muslims. As this religious group had reason to dislike Qaddafi at the time, a chorus of doubts arose that the Libyan leader could ever have induced them to work for him.
Suddenly the hit squads disappeared from The Post, never to return. Five years later, a two-line item in The Post told the truth. The item appeared in a story, not about the hit squads, but about the Iran-Contra scandal, the worst foreign policy scandal in U.S. history.
Manucher Ghorbanifar, a small-time Iranian exile working in Washington for Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, confessed in 1986 that he had dreamed up the hit squads. Why? “To hurt Libya, an enemy of Israel.”
Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/217-2000-december/3481-prosecution-stumbles-in-qlockerbie-trialq-of-pan-am-flight-103.html#sidebar
Brian
Vladimir Gagic said...
I have to say while I think bombing Libya was a grave mistake, especially because Libya gave up its nuclear program, I don't feel sympathy for his death. I have heard and read too many stories of how he and his family lived in wealth while his people suffered.
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thats a sample of the ignorance that fills the public mind! Your stories are just stories, and you should be ashamed of your credulity, esp as those stories are baseless.
Libya and Gadafi are victims of the Big Lie technique where a lie is told over and over till it gets believed in by the repetition.
Brian
Who Was Muammar Qaddafi? Libya's Wealth Redistribution Project
With an Introduction by Cynthia McKinney
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Fourth of Four Installments on Libya: Who is Stealing the Wealth?
etc
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27327
Brian
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