Without some small knowledge of the Senussi’s and their influence on East Libya much of what is now happening there is not readily understood. There follows a very short introduction to the Senussi Order. There are but few books on the subject. The reader may find Rosita Forbes’ eyewitness account in her book ‘The Secret of the Sahara: Kufra’ interesting reading. What follows is taken from a draft for my book ‘Libya – The History of Gaddafi’s Pariah State’ and is out of context but I hope it proves a useful introduction.

During the Ottoman period, the Sufi Senussi Order was established in Libya. In 1842 the Algerian born Islamic scholar and missionary, Sayyid Muhammad ibn ‘Ali Senussi, found himself by chance, taking up residence in Cyrenaica [East Libya], near the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Cyrene. There he found, living amongst the native Bedouin, a number of holy men known as the Marabtin b’il Baraka. Like them, Sayyid Muhammad was an Arabic speaking Sunni Muslim, familiar with Bedouin life.

There was also a flourishing cult of saints, the Marabtin, in Cyrenaica and tribes adjusted their annual migration to spend regular periods near the tomb of their patron saint. These tombs are often small square white structures topped by a dome. In my day, one such could be seen from the road from Benghazi to Benina airport with the tents of a visiting section of the al Awaqir tribe pitched nearby.

Therefore the Bedouin found nothing unusual when, in 1843, Sayyid Muhammad, known as the Grand Senussi, and his disciples founded a Senussi lodge at al Zawia al Baida on the central Cyranaican plateau. The new lodge was situated at a point where the territories of three important tribes met. Probably the best way to describe a Senussi lodge is an Islamic seminary and community centre. It was made up of a mosque, classrooms, store rooms and living quarters for the head and for the brothers of the order. Senussi lodges were self-sufficient and needed land and water to support the residents and their visitors.

In order to attract a lodge into their territory, local tribes had to give up some of their productive wells and arable land to support it. It was, thus, an important step because good land and reliable wells were precious resources in Cyrenaica and not often surplus to requirements.

This is how it worked in practice. When a few tribes applied for a lodge, they received a visit from a member of the Senussi family. Important visitors were always entertained to a feast and displays of wealth. By observing the interplay of personalities and their relative wealth, the Senussi visitor was able to spot the paramount sheik and areas of surplus wealth. They then set up their lodge under his protection and it was he who negotiated their title to arable land and grazing rights. The lodge was constructed where there is sufficient surplus acreage and water and was protected by the most powerful sheik amongst the tribes.

Under pressure from the Ottomans the Grand Senussi moved from Baida to Azziyat and thence to Jaghbub in the desert southwards of Tobruk. From here he allied himself with the Zuwaya tribe, whose home is the oasis of Kufra still further to the south. The Zuwaya traded across the dessert as far south as Chad, Wadai, Darfor and Kano and as far north as Ajadabia. The Grand Senussi’s followers travelled with the Zuwaya trading caravans to establish their missionary lodges.

In the late nineteenth century, the time was ripe for a new burst of missionary energy and the Grand Senussi was so successful that, within his lifetime, a vast theocratic empire was established. It was a missionary empire which stretched westwards into Tripolitania, eastwards into Saudi Arabia and the Western Desert of Egypt and southwards into the oasis towns of the Sahara.

Islamic orders are a way of life. One of the better known is the Wahhabi of Saudi Arabia, but there are many others. Their aim is to achieve a complete identification with God by means of contemplation, charity, living apart from the everyday world and performing religious exercises. For the Senussi order, this was achieved by the contemplation of the Prophet Muhammad. Followers were urged to imitate the Prophet’s life until he became their sole guide and counsellor.

Islam is a Bedouin faith at heart. It is easy to see that what the Prophet Muhammad taught the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia in the seventh century was well suited to the Bedouin of Cyrenaica, who still led much the same lives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its clear and simple principles, to do good, avoid evil and pray regularly, were appealing to a tough nomadic and semi-nomadic people who lived in tents and followed their flocks in a quest for water and grazing.

The Senussi order was a success in Cyrenaica because, as the great anthropologist E. E Evans-Pritchard once wrote: “(the Bedouin) need was for some authority lying outside their segmental tribal system which could compose intertribal or intersectional disputes and bind the tribes and tribal sections within an organisation and under a common symbol.”

It was also helpful that the Turkish occupiers of Libya were largely confined to the coastal towns and lacked the arms and will to destroy it.

Many years later, during the Italian occupation of Cyrenaica, the Senussi order was given a new lease of life and became almost politicised. The Italians found it impossible to deal with the many powerful and independent tribal sheiks. They found it easier, as did the British after WWII, to deal with the head of the order, Sayyid Idris, who was to become the King of an independent Libya.

The founder, Sayyid Muhammad, (the Grand Senussi), created around him a group of disciples, the Ikwan, who lived the pure life of Islam. In Cyrenaica, only the Ikwan were able to recite the special prayers and follow the rituals. The Ikwan lived in lodges built within the tribal homelands and held prayer meetings there. The Ikwan were missionaries in the true sense of the word and they lived cheerfully and dressed well. They were self-supporting, growing their own food and herding their own animals. Thus, they avoided living on charity.

The ordinary unschooled Bedouin, Muntasabin, had little knowledge of the inner rituals and special prayers of the order, but they gave their personal loyalty to the sheikhs or leaders of the lodges in their territory. The Cyranaican Bedouin lived austere lives and thus many casual observers thought of the Senussi order as being fanatical.

The Grand Senussi aimed to establish the conditions which would allow the Bedouin to live by their own laws and govern themselves, an aspiration which has recently plunged Libya into civil war.

The Grand Senussi remained in Libya for only a few years before he moved on to establish lodges in Egypt and Arabia. One of his sons, Sayyid Mohamed al Mahdi, who succeeded him, moved his headquarters to Kufra in 1895 and thence further south to Qiru in Chad in 1899.

The French, who were advancing there sphere of influence to Chad, were less than hospitable to the Senussi Order, so the Grand Senussi’s third successor, Sayyid Ahmad al Sheriff, moved his headquarters back to Kufra, in order to retain control of the Wadai to Benghazi slave trade route. He was a charismatic and inspiring Muslim and leader, who was both a scholar and a soldier who led the tribes in the First Senussi War and was defeated by the Italians and left Libya by submarine in 1918. The Grand Senussi’s fourth and last successor was Sayyid Muhammad al Idris who become King of Libya when it became fully independent.

From this brief sketch of the foundation and spread of the Senussi Order, it will be clear that it penetrated rapidly from its first foundation lodge near Baida, mainly via the slave trading routes from Kufra to the Sudan, Chad, Mali and Northern Nigeria. It was pushed out of the Sahel states by the French. However, its firm hold on the nine Sa’adi tribes in Cyreniaca was to give it a key role in modern Libya.

John Oakes
Books by John Oakes:
For books by John Oakes see… (USA): http://www.amazon.com/John-Oakes/e/B001K86D3O/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 ….. (UK): http://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Oakes/e/B001K86D3O/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Update 31st December 2012

The Italians had occupied Libya from 1911. They had left Kufra alone but in 1931 they attacked the oasis and brutally killed the Senussi supporters there. The story of the fall of Kufra is told on this site;

http://abughilan.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/fall-of-last-citadelal-kufra.html

Update 20th January 2013

The Libyan government commemorates of Battle of Kufra

http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/01/19/1931-battle-of-kufra-commemorated/

John Oakes – 6th November 2012

Update 10th November 2012

A very interesting development in the trial of those accused of murdering  Staff Maj. Gen. Abdel Fattah Younis al-Obeidi. See this:-

http://www.libyaherald.com/2012/11/10/younis-murder-judge-orders-jalil-to-appear-in-benghazi-court/

Update 8th January 2013

The trial of a member of the Obeidat has just commenced in Tripoli and will be worth following:

http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/01/07/court-cases-adjourned/

Update 9th January 2013
Some details of the killing of Gen. Abdel Fattah Younis al-Obeidi

http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2013/01/02/feature-02

Update 25th January 2013

The Benghazi ‘hit list’ has become world news. One senior officer assassinated in that city in September 2012 was a member of the Obeidat. Air Force Colonel Badr Khamis Al-Obedi was assassinated by unknown gunmen as he left the city’s Saida Aisha mosque after prayers.

The earliest banknotes issued by the Kingdom of Libya are in fact those bearing the likeness of King Idris. The reason behind this confusion is because this issue is dated January 1, 1952 which is the latest date that Libya was to become independent as per the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution of November 21, 1949. This date was printed on the banknotes before the law authorizing the banknotes’ use had passed.

In reality, the law authorizing the use of Libyan banknotes was passed on October 24, 1951. This in turn was the date that was displayed on the next series of banknotes. This next issue is known as the “United Kingdom of Libya” banknotes because its notes bear the titles المملكة الليبية المتحدة and its English translation “United Kingdom of Libya”. This series was actually issued in 1955, unlike the common belief that it was issued in 1951. The 1/2 Pound, 5 Pounds, and 10 Pounds of this issue are particularly difficult to find, especially the latter two. Below are illustrations of this desirable issue.

Symes, Peter. “Reference Site for Islamic Banknotes: Libya.” The Banknotes of Libya. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2012. <http://www.islamicbanknotes.com/libya.htm&#62;.

Background

‘The Libyan monarchy of Idris, which was based in Benghazi, was installed by the United States and British in the 1950’s to oversee their economic and military interests in North Africa. Libya in 1951, under the leadership of King Idris, had amoung the lowest standards of Living in the world. The Idris monarchy was overthrown in a bloodless revolution led by Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1969. This led to the American Wheelus Air Base (The largest American base outside of US at that time) being dismantled and the American and British armed forces stationed in Libya evacuating. The western oil companies were then nationalised.’

The 1969 al-Fateh Revolution

‘The uprising in Libya, which has been portrayed by many in the west as a democratic movement, has been symbolised by the tri-coloured rebel flag. The flag is in fact the flag of the oppressive, undemocratic, monarchy of Idris. At the start of the conflict elements of the rebels in Benghazi held aloft pictures of King Idris. Whilst by no means are all the rebels monarchists, it is however important to highlight the overthrown Libyan monarchy’s history,  influence in Benghazi and relationship with the West. It is of no surprise then that the exiled monarchy of Idris has played a hidden hand in this conflict. Closely working with their old allies in NATO in an attempt to regain their lost status in Libya and ‘return to democracy’ as his Royal Highness Prince Idris bizarrely and unashamedly declares in his CNN interview.’

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It’s nowhere near my birthday, but a bunch of people I know have ones coming up.  This means I have to keep hearing about how old we’re all getting.  This usually doesn’t bother me.  Usually, I don’t remember how old I am.  I have to do the math.  On occasion, I’ve actually done it wrong.  I’m pretty sure I was 19 for a few years.

Maybe it’s my ninja-like procrastination skills, or my tendency to just do whatever people tell me without question, maybe it’s that I constantly keep trying to get through one day at a time to avoid the soul crushing pointlessness of the day in and day out routine of modern society, but getting older has never bothered me. 

Why let it?  It’s going to happen.  You can’t stop it; you can’t Peter Pan that shit no matter how much of a douche you are.  You can hide from the fact that you’re becoming an adult by acting like a child, or you can just say fuck it, because this is who I am.  Who you are might be cool, probably not.  But it’s you, and trying to conform to these age determined milestones of where you should be and what you should have accomplished is only going to drive you insane.

Regardless, the years start creeping.  You’re going to get older.  It’s probably going to suck.  Maybe it’s the gray hairs I keep noticing as I’m Murray’s-ing my awesome hair, or maybe it’s that I’m getting a little pouchy, or that I’m always friggin tired, but you start to feel old.  It happens.

And having to listen to everyone else bitch about how they’re getting older and their life isn’t where they want it and they should be married or they should be Prince of Sealand or have a pet duck—wait that’s mine—or have some other crazy animal that they won’t name Rupert because I totally call dibs on that pet name, is starting to make me feel like that too. 

I’m beginning to feel that now I’m not where I should be, that now I’m getting too old to do whatever I should have been doing.  That feeling has been starting to grow but it didn’t truly hit me until I was reading this article on Cracked, and then it was a bit like a flick in the nuts.  You don’t notice it at first, but there it comes, kind of like a wave of ball-pain that rolls up your junk and just sits in the pit of your stomach.  I was ninja’d.  I got ninja’d good by Cracked.  It was #4, the part on Gaddafi, that started the ball rolling.

The thing is, I’m 27, and that’s still young enough. Except for a gay wedding and a couple other instances, most of my friends are still single.  They’re getting engaged but fuck that, everyone’s engaged these days.  Some are engaged to be engaged, as if it were possible to stupid up this world any more.  So unless there’s an open bar, I’m not counting it.

So after getting my balls ninja’d by a website, I started thinking about all the people who have done things, notable things.  I mean legitimate notable things—historical, newsworthy-notable things.  I don’t consider the double digit collection of traffic cones—and one construction barrel—I’ve amassed notable in this regard.

So here are some things that I am now, apparently, too old to accomplish:

Be a boy king. 

From ten to eighteen Tutankhamen was the ruler of a fucking country.  Ten.  Ten years old this kid took the throne.  I don’t think I even knew what jerking off was when I was ten, and this kid was a goddamn Pharaoh.  I got a black belt in Tae Kwon Do when I was ten, what did he do?  Assumed the throne of Egypt.  I think he wins.

 I was getting my first speeding ticket and he was being murdered by jealous rivals.  Or dying of malaria.  I guess the murder theory has fallen out of favor, even though malaria or a broken leg taxing his feeble product-of-incest health is pretty lame.   That’s the trade off with being born heir to the throne, his parents were brother and sister, leaving Tut with a cleft palate, scoliosis, and reduced him to walking with a cane for most of his life.

But he was a pharaoh.  Totally worth it.

What sucks for him is that his death was sudden, so his grand burial chamber wasn’t finished yet.  The tomb he was found was much smaller than what would be expected for someone of his position.  Since the custom was for burial to be seventy days after death, there wasn’t exactly much time to build a pyramid for him.  Which means eternal rest in a tomb intended for someone else.

Become the youngest college professor.  Ever.

At nineteen years old, Alia Sabur became the youngest college professor in history, beating the record previously held since 1717.  She officially got the job three days before her birthday, so some people say eighteen, some nineteen.  I’m going with nineteen, since that’s when she started teaching.  Alia was one of those I don’t need to go to school because its boring and know everything and aliens rewired my brain to make me awesome people.  She enrolled in undergrad at age 10, graduating summe cum laude at fourteen at which point she went to grad school.  Remember when you were a freshman and sat alone at lunch your back to everyone writing poetry about how no one understands you?  No?  Right, me neither.  I don’t write poetry.  Yeah, so she was starting her Masters—you know, the new Bachelors—a degree most twenty-two year olds don’t have the attention span to achieve.

Record a Black History commercial.

I’m sad I’ll never record a segment for TBS’s Black History Minute like Barack Obama did when he was 20.  It was riveting to hear about… a black lawyer… I think he had something to do with civil rights.  Plessy vs Ferguson?  He went to Howard University—that sounds familiar….

 Come on, it was only a minute long, were you really paying attention?  Or where you too busy snickering because the future President stuttered out S-S-Supreme Court and trying to decide if he was on his way to going full afro?  I’ll also never get to impress all twenty-five people watching TBS in 1991 with the fact that I was editor of the Harvard Law Review.

I actually like the idea of the Black History Minute commercials, kind of like the end of an episode of GI Joe.  A moral to offset the cartoon violence, and distract you from the fact that the Joes lose every time they go up against Cobra.  They always get away.  But now you know, and knowing is half the battle.  The other half is making losing look good, so good you don’t even notice they suck at their jobs.  And think about it, without the Black History Minute, most people would never know that the Buffalo Bills stole their logo from a historically black Howard University in Washington, DC.

Start the British Invasion.  And then piss off some Jesus-freaks.

By 1964 the Beatles were a pretty big deal.  They’d formed four years earlier, had a decent radio hit in the UK a couple years later, but it was by ’64 that they basically dominated the entire planet with their underwhelming music.  George Harrison was the youngest of them at 21, so he’s the reason why they fall at this point in my list, and the reason they got way too out there towards the end for anyone not dropping acid like it was a fulltime job.  Paul McCartney was next at 22, followed by Lennon and that creepy Mr. Conductor from Thomas the Tank Engine, both 24.

Two years later, in 1966, Lennon famously stated that the Beatles had become “more popular than Jesus” creating instant unbridled foaming at the mouth hatred from the United States’ Bible Belt.    Turns out he was just referring to how other people saw their success, probably after his manager told to him to tone down the “I am the Second Coming” rhetoric.  “If I’d said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have gotten away with it,” he later said, “but if you want me to apologize, if  that will make you happy, then okay, I’m sorry.”

And then he walked water.  And by water I mean the bajillions of dollars he used to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Be a record setting female jockey.  Or a female.  Or a jockey.

Since the Beatles skipped over 23 we’re going to backtrack to Rose Napravnik who set the record for finishing 9^th place in a race.  This wasn’t a race just for females, like how they have their own pushups.  This was a real race, but 9^th place was still somehow a milestone. 

I once won a first place trophy that was taller than me when my three opponents got each got disqualified for kicked me in the head.  I didn’t even duck into those kicks; apparently I just had a face that needed to be kicked.  But I won and they didn’t, so it’s cool. 

But for finishing 9^th at the Kentucky Derby, this 23 year old chick from Jersey beat the previous record held by a woman … 11^th place?  Maybe?  I think it was 11^th place.  Nobody cares.  Oh, and in 2006, her first year on the job as a professionally jockey, she made over six million dollars.  So, yeah…

Assassinate the President.  Maybe alone, maybe with the CIA.  Or maybe with Keith Hernandez.

I’ll never get to assassinate a president, whether as a lone gunman or as part of a conspiracy.  At twenty four, Lee Harvey Oswald made three impossibly fast while amazingly accurate shots and changed history.  Then he got shot too.  I always forget that he was that young. 

Maybe it was the hairline, maybe it was that he’d joined the Marines, defected to the Soviet Union, came crying back, tried to defect to Cuba, had a wife and two kids and then shot the freakin President of the United States, but something just always made me think he was a little older.  I don’t know. 

John Wilkes Booth was 26, so there’s another example of my dropping the ball, especially considering he was a well established actor at the time.  Presidential assassin wasn’t his claim to fame—he already had that.  No, organizing a rebellion against the union and killing a president was just the quirky Scientology-like cry for attention of the 19^th century.  Everyone was doing it.

  But, I suppose there’s a little hope for this one yet since Leon Czolgosz was 28 and Charles Guiteau that crazy-assed oft-forgotten assassin of James Garfield was 40.  It seems to have taken him a little longer to work up all that crazy.

Take my parents to court in Spain and lose because I ‘m a freeloading bastard.

Okay, maybe I’m a freeloading bastard, but at least I know I have it good and I’m not about to take my parents to court because they cut off my allowance.  When I was 25.  And was going law school. 

That this guy lost shows he should maybe study a bit more.  According to the judge the man  completing his studies at such a slow rate, he may not be done for several years.  Several.  Years.

That he took them to court shows that he’s a douche.    He was demanding $588 a month from his parents.  The judge ordered him to get a job and learn to support himself.  This judge’s tough love approach for some reason applied to both man-child and parents in that he also ordered the parents to provide a food stipend for two years and take over the guy’s car payments.  I feel like that wasn’t so much teaching the guy a lesson at that point.  Especially since, according to the parents, their kid was verbally and physically abusive towards them, who both held full time jobs. 

I can’t find any articles that mention him by name, but they don’t specifically say the records of this ridiculous lawsuit have been sealed.  Regardless, he’s about a year into his two year food stipend, so I hope he put his law degree to good use and found some work flipping burgers for tourists.

Organize a city-wide bus boycott.

In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to move her lazy ass out of some white guy’s lawful seat on a bus, touching off what would later become the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  This racially motivated and financially crippling protest was led in part by Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was only 26 at the time, but was already a leading voice in civil rights and desegregation.  The year before this he’d been appointed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as well as started working towards a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Boston University. 

All right, so contemporary analysis of his dissertation has proven he plagiarized portions of it, but who hasn’t copied and pasted from time to time?  While paying the bills as a Baptist preacher?  Its 1955—no one’s going to Google that shit, you’re cool.

By the way, King skipped both 9^th and 12^th grades in high school, enrolling at Morehouse College at age fifteen without technically graduating high school, because apparently you can do that.  At Morehouse he earned a bachelor’s in sociology and from there received a Bachelor of Divinity degree of Crozer Theological Seminary three years later.

Lead a coup against a King.

Muammar Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya—or Styles to his close friends—made some headlines this year for finally getting killed, and that was more or less bound to happen eventually. 

But despite being out of his mind, the impressive thing wasn’t necessarily that he’d managed to maintain power since 1969, but that he was able to seize it at all.  Oh, right, he did this at 27 years old.  I don’t know much about Libya, and I don’t know shit about King Idris, but something was wrong on both accounts if a group of 70 officers and enlisted men—mostly from the damn Signal Corps—were able to overthrow the king’s government and take power without a single person on either side being killed. 

The Signal Corps?  You mean the guys answering the phones?  Taking messages?  They took over your country?  Within two hours? 

Okay, so King Idris was in Turkey for surgery at the time, but two hours?  Your army’s secretaries just took over your country in two hours?  You suck.

What did I do when I was 27?  I watched a lot of BBC shows on Netflix and pulled a Mulder by sleeping most nights on my couch.  Gaddafi overthrew a king.  And then went on to crazy up Libya.  He finally got his long sought after revenge on the Italians for his grandfather’s death in the 1911 Italian invasion of Tripoli, and the death of his cousins due to an Italian landmine when he was kid by expelling Italians from Libya entirely.

It was a good start to his completely fair rule.  Libya was a republic now with the monarchy gone.  Totally a republic.  See, its even called the Libyan Arab Republic.  He wasn’t a dictator at all.  Nope.  Definitely not. 

 That brings us right up to the present where I’m sitting in a well worked-in groove in my couch drinking some High Life.  It’s a tasty beer, at a tasty price.  What?

But maybe all of this isn‘t much to be depressed about.  After all, it takes Saturn twenty-nine years to orbit the Sun, maybe I just have a slow orbit.  That’s not entirely an optimistic view of life since it’s only going to start another thirty year orbit.  Not much to look forward to.

So I have a slow orbit.  Or I’m just lazy.  Or I watch too much TV.  Or I drink too much.  There’s a hundred reasons why this isn’t my fault.  After all, I’m an American.  Nothing is my fault.  This is the land of deniability; just ask anyone who’s served in office. 

It’s not like I’m alone in this not doing shit with my life either, I mean, Jesus didn’t get on the ball until he was thirty, so what do you want from me? 

Yeah, that’s right; I just compared myself to Christ. 

You know he liked the High Life, too.

Background

‘The Libyan monarchy of Idris, which was based in Benghazi, was installed by the United States and British in the 1950’s to oversee their economic and military interests in North Africa. Libya in 1951, under the leadership of King Idris, had amoung the lowest standards of Living in the world. The Idris monarchy was overthrown in a bloodless revolution led by Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1969. This led to the American Wheelus Air Base (The largest American base outside of US at that time) being dismantled and the American and British armed forces stationed in Libya evacuating. The western oil companies were then nationalised.’

The 1969 al-Fateh Revolution

‘The uprising in Libya, which has been portrayed by many in the west as a democratic movement, has been symbolised by the tri-coloured rebel flag. The flag is in fact the flag of the oppressive, undemocratic, monarchy of Idris. At the start of the conflict elements of the rebels in Benghazi held aloft pictures of King Idris. Whilst by no means are all the rebels monarchists, it is however important to highlight the overthrown Libyan monarchy’s history,  influence in Benghazi and relationship with the West. It is of no surprise then that the exiled monarchy of Idris has played a hidden hand in this conflict. Closely working with their old allies in NATO in an attempt to regain their lost status in Libya and ‘return to democracy’ as his Royal Highness Prince Idris bizarrely and unashamedly declares in his CNN interview.’

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The Arab Spring has spawned a sort of new beginning that started in Tunisia and Egypt (Bahrain, Syria, Yemen etc…) and now continuing in Libya.  The people of these nations are letting it be known that they are ready for change that will end the dictatorship hand of Kings that have unfairly hoarded the wealth and have kept the people poor and suppressed.  While The Arab Spring has developed the United States have selectively lent their support (military and moral) to the people choosing freedom.  It can be argued that the U.S. role in Middle East affairs has not been consistent; for example in the case of Egypt the U.S. only vocally supported the ousting of Hosni Mubarak.  In the case of Libya the U.S. not only have asked for Qaddafi to step down but U.S. led forces initially led the attack on Libyan forces before Qaddafi could fulfill a promise he made in killing all that opposed him.

President Obama made the decision to use the U.S. military in a limited role where no American lives would be at risk; even though the initial thought was wrong when the belief was it would take a matter of weeks for Gaddafi and forces to give up.  The news out of Libya today sounds as if the war or whatever you want to call it against Qaddafi is nearing an end; rebel forces are now in the capital of Libya (Tripoli) and bearing down on Gaddafi’s stronghold.  The word is the rebels are looking to arrest Gaddafi and have him stand trial for the crimes against the people of Libya, but do we really think Qaddafi is going to come out with his hands raised high??

I just can’t imagine Gaddafi wanting to be displayed like Mubarak has been (laying in a hospital gurney and in a cell) during his trials in Egypt.  Gaddafi comes across as having too much pride for that, he looks like he will go out blasting or he will just try to escape with a couple of million and cool out in some nation that he is cool with.

With that said, once Gaddafi is out many will ask, “What’s next for Libya?”  I am of the opinion that the only people who will know what’s next for Libya are the people of Libya; outsiders cannot have the mindset that they will come in and mold the new look of Libya.  Like Egypt countries like the U.S. and the British have to take a step back and for right now let the chips fall where they may.  That’s right, we helped get the dictator out and now we need to fall back and hope Libya will be a better place for the people.

*fingers crossed*

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!

The small population still lived in extreme poverty, seeing little of the benefits associated with its new found wealth. Nearly half of the income from Libyan Oil remained with the powerful Western Oil Companies and the remainder was controlled by King Idris, who had ruled the North African country since the end of the Second World War.

Gaddafi joined the ranks of the Libyan Army and in 1969 the 27 year old, along with a small group of collaborators removed the King from power as he travelled abroad to receive medical treatment. Gaddafi and his supporters returned the country and its huge Oil reserves to the Libyans and Muammar assumed the role of ‘’ Protector of the People ‘’.

Within 12 months Gaddafi’s allies had reservations and a number of unsuccessful attempts to remove him followed, leaving him paranoid but extremely determined. Threatening to expel any foreign companies who did not cooperate, Gaddafi renegotiated the agreements ensuring that more of the Oil wealth remained with the Libyans, although perhaps unsurprisingly the general population saw little change, with the self-proclaimed Colonel handing much of the countries wealth and power to members of his family and close friends.

Gaddafi portrays himself as a Philosophiser and is known to have deep convictions when it comes to social harmony. The problem is his determination to share his beliefs with the Libyan people. Those who question him quickly find their freedom and their lives taken with ruthless execution. Under Gaddafi, all Libyans are free to say and do as they please, as long as they agree with him, those that don’t rarely survive to tell their story. Libyan officials and government agencies set about their  ‘’ Foreign Policy ‘’ which among many acts of violence included the systematic execution of Libyan citizens living abroad who had criticised his regime.

Having orchestrated his own revolution, Gaddafi used Libya’s wealth to support freedom fighters around the world in an attempt to spread his ideology, but in a world of elected democracy, freedom fighters go by another name, Terrorists. Gaddafi’s regime supported organisations from the Australian Aborigines to the IRA, all known to use violence in pursuit of political change.

In 1981 the US refused to do business with Libya and as a result attacks on US citizens increased, including the 1986 attack on US soldiers in a Berlin Nightclub and the bombing of a Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 killing hundreds of innocent people, most American citizens. In 1984 a protest outside the Libyan Embassy in London resulted in the Libyan Secret Service shooting and killing protesters along with a British Police Women.

For over 30 years Gaddafi sought allegiance with anyone who would join his fight against democracy, from Arabs to Africans, Russians to the Chinese Gaddafi changed his colours continuously but was unable to shed his status as a Pariah.  Sanctions imposed on Libya as a result had a devastating effect on ordinary people and his repeated attempts to acquire Nuclear Weapons made it impossible for Libya to be part of International politics.

In the late 1990’s Gaddafi seemed to have managed the impossible. With the Colonel renouncing violence, the suspects in the Lockerbie bombings were extradited to the Netherlands and Billions paid in compensation to the families of the victims of Libyan terrorism all around the world. In 2003 UN weapons inspectors were invited into Libya and as a result Gaddafi finally had his place on the Worlds stage.

A state visit from UK Prime Minister Tony Blair followed and Gaddafi even addressed the United Nations in September 2009.

In 2007 Libya signed a deal with the French Government to develop Nuclear Power Stations as well as an agreement to by Arms from the French. 25 % of the Oil exported from Libya is bought by Italy, and in return Gaddafi has invested millions in the Italian Economy in recent years, buying stakes in companies such as Fiat and the Unicredit Bank. In 2009 the only suspect convicted for the Lockerbie terrorist attack was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, having been diagnosed with cancer, although some questioned the timing as the release coincided with a deal between Libya and Oil Company BP.

The current political unrest in North Africa came as a surprise and few predicted the people of Libya would dare to protest against such a repressive regime. What certainly did not come as a surprise was the fact that unlike the Tunisian and Egyptian rulers, Gaddafi has not gone quietly. Fierce battles have ensued with protesters fighting Gaddafi’s supporters throughout the country. A UN resolution has declared Libya a no – fly zone to stop Gaddafi’s soldiers using its air force against civilians, but almost immediately tactical air strikes followed including alleged attempts to assassinate Gaddafi and his family.

Even before UN intervention Western
Governments were involved, with the British SAS caught trying to negotiate with protesters and the French government admitting arming them with weapons without UN or International agreement. Some might question the difference between Gaddafi sponsoring Terrorism and the French Government secretly arming revolutionaries in a foreign country, especially as they had sold many of the weapons pointing at them from Tripoli.

So where are we now, back in a situation where western governments are using military force to ‘’ Protect ‘’ people from a political regime in a country with vast Oil reserves. It may not be to long before Western Oil Companies are back in control of Libya’s Black Gold but an increase in security and standard of living for the Libyan population is still a long way off.

By: Kieran Dunne

Muammar Gaddafi, his son -  Saif al-Islam, and his brother-in-law and intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi have all been declared as war criminal suspects following an investigation by the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, presented the evidence to the ICC in the hope of gaining international arrest warrants. He claimed that the three mentioned operated as an “inner circle”  with Saif al-Islam operating as a “de facto prime minister”. The legal eagle also claimed that they were the chief orchestrates in the killing of peaceful protestors.

It was also claimed that Gaddafi led the resistance with the aim of “preserving his absolute authority,” with the prosecutor also claiming to have direct evidence of orders made by Gaddafi himself.

The request for an arrest warrant against Gaddafi’s brother, Saif, will come as a surprise given his ties with the West and his apparent willingness to negotiate with NATO and the allies.

According to British newspaper, the Guardian, If the ICC issues the arrest warrants, it will deepen the embarrassment of the London School of Economics, where Saif studied and which accepted a £1.5m donation from a foundation Saif controlled to fund a north African research programme. Of that total, £300,000 was actually spent before the programme was suspended.

In a statement made by the prosecutor, those with highest rank would be targeted.”It is indeed a characteristic of the situation in Libya that massive crimes are reportedly committed upon instruction of a few persons who control the organisations that execute the orders,” he said.

Some of the evidence gathered by  Moreno-Ocampo’s said to have come from within the regime in Tripoli and in an apparent attempt to stir inner trouble, the prosecutor released a statement saying:

“During the last week, the office of the prosecutor received several calls from high-level officials in Gaddafi’s regime willing to provide information.”

If the arrest warrants are issued from the ICC, it will then be up to international governments to act upon the policing duty. The ICC has no police force of its own.

Gaddafi has been leader of Libya since 1 September 1969 when he overthrew King Idris and established the Libyan Arab Republic. In these 42 years as dictator of an oppressive regime, Gaddafi has come under numerous attacks from humanitarian organisations.

Since February 17 2011, Gaddafi’s regime has been under constant pressure from protestors, both peaceful and rebellious, with a full-blown civil war now taking place between supporters and protestors.

Since then a number of regime officials have departed with Gaddafi’s former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, telling the Swedish newspaper Expressen that he has evidence that Gaddafi had personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

The uprising is in to its 88 day with no sign of abating.

Video: Protestors shot at by police:

Colonel Gaddafi was killed by the Libyan Rebel Forces (now known as the Transitional Authorities) in his Hometown Sirte, on October 20, 2011. Now it’s time for Libya to prove that they can establish and maintain a democracy.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.

When the first step towards democracy is soaked in blood, a change of heart isn’t easy to come by. Democracy requires a belief in peace and in non-violence, the primary reason why India has been more successful with democracy despite being the most populated of all the nations that gained their independence in the twentieth century, and despite having been born in a sea of blood. What is the belief of those who are now strapping themselves in the driver’s seat for these reborn nations? We will know in a few years. Right now it appears to be a time to celebrate.

————————————Original post follows————————————–

Presenting the self-proclaimed “King of the Kings”, the nutty dictator of Libya – Muammar Gaddafi, who’s had Libya in his claws for 40 long years – and who isn’t yet willing to loosen his grip…come blood, gore, deaths, or even international opposition!

I’ll martyr Libya. (What did I say? Oh…I meant I’ll die a martyr for Libya!)

The Highlights of Gadhafi’s Life – As seen by the Caricaturist who suffers from Tunnel Vision coupled with Multiple Blind Spots!

Muammar Al-Gaddafi, the 70-year old Libyan leader who doesn’t let go of his 40-year long hold on Libya, was born in a tent in the desert, near Sirt, a city of Libya. He received his elementary education in a madarsa. When he grew up, he joined the military academy of Libya and graduated in 1966. He became the dictator of Libya in 1969 after overthrowing King Idris and ridding Libya of the “oily-rich” monarchy. Others who helped him overthrow the monarchy became subservient to him – thus began the reign of Gaddafi.

A full political biography of Gaddafi isn’t something that I really want to suffocate my readers with, so I will stick to presenting only the essential details, which… pertain to his children. (You think there’s more to life than children? Ask any parent.) Gaddafi has eight children – 7 male! I won’t even try to write down the details of all his sons, but it’s difficult for me not to mention his fourth son, aptly called Hannibal M. Gaddafi.

The Ridiculously Important Stuff!

1. Even with Kadafi (yes…another spelling,) Libya has one of the  highest per capita GDP in Africa – all thanks to Oil.
2. Gaddafi worked really hard to get weapons of mass destruction from China, Pakistan, and India – and then when he saw what happened to Saddam, he did an about-turn and allowed for inspection and destruction of his own arsenal (Why? Don’t ask me – ask a Gaddafi-expert.)
3. In 2008, Gaddafi got bestowed upon himself the title of King of the Kings of Africa, and called for the creation of the United States of Africa (which thankfully didn’t happen – or we’d be wondering where to fit the abbreviation “USA”!)
4. Believe it or not, he was involved in at least 25 assassinations internationally, and yet…he gets to meet all the top world leaders. (Why can’t I, a law-abiding citizen of a democracy, meet them instead – I ask you.)
5. On one hand, Gaddafi is considered an “almost terrorist” who brought Libya to a level where the US once declared it a “rogue state”; on the other hand, he has been involved in many public utility projects within Libya.
6. In 2010, during his trip to Italy, Gaddafi asked the European women to convert to Islam (I think he’d have got a better response from men… but then I am ignorant of the finer threads of Gaddafi’s thought process.)
7. In 2009, he  addressed the UN General Assembly, in which he called Barack Obama, “the son of Africa.” (I don’t know if the White House issued an official denial, but it did make life difficult for the US President, ultimately forcing him to produce his birth certificate to show that he was “the son of America”!)
8. Gaddafi often contradicts himself in his speeches (all politicians do, but then unlike Gaddafi, most of them make an attempt to appear sensible.)
9. He imposed Sharia law in Libya, in the year 1973. Accordingly, alcohol was outlawed. (Now, are you wondering how he got those bags under his eyes?)

The Present Civil Unrest in Libya

It began in February 2011 (Inspired by the Tunisian protests…as it happened elsewhere in the middle-east.) Despite the continuing battle between the Army and the Civilians, and despite the intervention of the international community, Muammar Gaddafi has refused to let go of Libya.

For more details, watch CNN.

Gaddafi’s Plastic Surgery

• The man had a plastic surgery to look young. Don’t ask me for the before and after pictures, please. However, you are welcome to read about it here.
• Gaddafi gives a winning smile on the Libyan Dinar. I wonder if the sketch was done from a post-plastic surgery picture?

Moammar Gaddafi’s Quotes

It is the Libyan people’s responsibility to liquidate such scums who are distorting Libya’s image abroad.
—Gaddafi

“There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe–without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.” —Gaddafi

I really don’t know if the Gaddafi Quotes here are real or not…but they sure make you wonder whether the man actually has a left side to his brain.

Gaddafi’s Female Body-guards

No post on Gaddafi can be complete without a mention of his “virgin” body-guards. (Ever wonder what the interview process for recruitment of his body-guards must include?)
For a colorful collection of pictures that show his many body-guards, the various spellings of his name as a list of tags  – click this link here

And finally…

Watch the Crazy Gadhafi slideshow here, and … design a Gaddafi Costume for your next Halloween party!

The tribes that gained in influence were the al-Qaddadfa, al-Magarha, and al-Warfalla. These three tribes were to be the mainstay of the of Muammar Qaddafis support up until 1993. This was when a coup against Qaddafi with members of the al-Warfalla tribe was brought down. From then on al-Warfalla has been out in the cold. Qaddafi has come more and more come to rely on close relatives and trusted member  of the al-Qaddadfa tribe, who he appointed to key positions in the military, government and security services, thus alienating former tribal allies.

In the uprising of 2011, in Tripolitana the al-Warfalla and the Al-Zitan tribes have proclaimed their support for the up-rising and the al-Maghara tribe, a former ally of Qaddafi, is also backing the uprising. In Cyrenaica all seven major clans are in support of the uprising. In the oil rice Al-Kufrah district, in the south part of Cyrenaica the al-Zuwayya tribe, supporters of the Senussi-order, have also thrown in their lot with the opposition.

This all explains Qaddafis need for foreign mercenaries as this conflict can be characterized as everyone against the al-Qaddadfa and the Qaddafi-family.

If the regime of Qaddafi is vanquish, with the revolutionary system of Jamahiriya abolished, what remains then but the memory of the Libyan monarchy under king Idris, the Senussi-order and the tribes? As a majority of the tribes are backing the uprising against Qaddafi it would not be an unreasonable hypothesis that they will play a major role in the development of Libya after Qaddafi.

Right now the US has got it wrong – again. We talk about exchange rates the one you should all watch for is the exchange of blood for oil.

Blood spilt for Oil

Our Media

*I haven’t completed this post yet so please come back for more information; I am currently working on the distortions of the mainstream and social media and what we are being told

With UN Resolution 1973, the western media were already distorting the truth and speaking about air strikes, ground attack and how to help the rebels. The social media has been flooded with masses of mis-information often telephoned in from a wide range of areas London Oman Egypt…you can take your pick.  There have been so many examples where the “breaking” news from a person ringing is a distortion at best or simply made up. The ABC appears the worst and even BK of crikey.com has got hooked.  I confess I don’t watch free to air news on the commercial channels so my view is only that of SBS and ABC.

A week ago the ABC took a call from an Indian woman purporting to be attending a university in a town somewhere between Tripoli and Benghazi. The report was absurd as it is the 2 Libyan Universities  are located in either Benghazi or Tripoli. Another regular feed we are getting is from a Doctor from within Misrata. No name; The detail of what he says can easily be debunked.

Our Australian media is either being incredibly naive or is actively complicit in false reporting. One of the worst examples is with Cabe of the ABC stuck in Benghazi then Tobruk for the duration constantly speculates on events in Tripoli or further west in Towns like Misrata. We get live mobile snippets from either a Mohamed or an Ahmed always miraculously found on the streets somewhere ready to provide eye-witness reports.

Don’t rely on Twitter

Here are 2 examples of the danger of relying on Social media

1) Last week Turkey announce that it was full in support of the No Fly Zone Yes? A SBS  reporter twittered this  as breaking this as breaking news some 24  hours later and only just a few hours after the bombing had started. I happen to know this wasn’t deliberate but that they were relying on some news out of the US again on twitter and relied on that as being correct. In fact by the time of the breaking news story Turkey was full on condemning the bombing. We have to be careful with the bias of news contra to what a certain Mr Kean may say.

2) This is a brilliant example of utter nonsense in reporting and involves a twitter called the Arab Revolution and 2 tweets that show clearly the danger of relying on social media as being true in what the are reporting

Tweet A 5 March Tweeter; Arab Revolution ” Libyans storm Gaddafi’s consulate in Rabat” see Video It’s not exciting but take note of the guy with glasses tearing up the Green book. Rabat is in Morocco.

Tweet (B) also 5 March Tweeter; Mossaberizing  re-tweeted by Arab Revolution “Situation right now in front of October SS HQ” (SS HQ were the Head Quarters of the Egyptian Secret Service)

SS Police HQ in Cario

Take a look at the Guy addressing the crowd…looks familiar? Yes it the man in the Video. How can that be the distance between Rabat and Cario is 3593 kms. So this is Superman. Hardly What about the building ? Notice the flagpoles see the colour of the plaster? You got it……. It is the same building . This is the fraud in reporting on Libya. This is what we are all being subjected too. As for Mr Mossaberizing he is a Libyan who has been living in Egypt in exile.  He busied himself taking photographs of demonstrators in Tahrir Square displaying pre 1951 Libyan flags. It is no co-incidence that you will see many of these flags on display through the Egyptian demonstration as part of a carefully orchestrated plan for the day of anger Feb 17th. Bottom line is this is all nonsense so beware of Twitter

Several weeks ago ABC Radio National interviewed a character allegedly representing the Libya Youth movement. This organisation based in Manchester UK didn’t exist in reality before Feb 20. Go ahead and challenge their validity and you will get no response.   This organisation gets its funding from the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition (NCLO) formed in London in 2005. The NCLO in turn is funded and a front for the National Front for the salvation of Libya (NFSL)  headed by Ibrahim Sahad and Gen. Youssef  Magarieff. The NFSL in turn has been funded by the CIA since 1984 when it attempted an assassination of Gaddafi. After Libyan Chad war it formed  the Libyan National Army (LNA)

The Saudis have provided  $millions to the NFSL so it is by no coincidence that Obama asked the Saudis to provide more arms to the rebels. The military might of the NFSL was at its height in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1987 several hundred Libyan soldiers and a large quantity of Libyan military equipment were captured by the Chadian Army. Libya and Chad were involved in a long-standing dispute over the Azou Strip a territory believed to hold large uranium reserves. The Libyan prisoners were formed into a “Contra” style force led by Col. Abdoulgassim Khalifa Haftar.

Well armed Rebels in Benghazi

A week ago the ABC took a call from an Indian woman purporting to be attending a university in a town somewhere between Tripoli and Benghazi. The report was absurd as it is the 2 Libyan Universities  are located in either Benghazi or Tripoli. Another regular feed we are getting is from a Doctor from within Mustratau No name; The detail of what he says can easily be debunked.

In reporting the fighting for the  town of RasLanouf of just 10,00 inhabitants, was often referred to a city. It is a town built expressly for the purpose to serve the oil refinery, which the rebels attempted to destroy before they left. Imagine the challenge of a fire fight in and around the confines of an oil refinery.

In the first week of the campaign Israel launched air strikes in Gaza but did you hear nothing about that…yet

Gaddafi. had not sworn to show no mercy to the people of Benghazi – he had given the “rebels” a window in which to lay down their arms and he had said that he would show mercy to those launching this armed uprising.  He said he would offer an amnesty and to that end Chavez the President of Venezuela suggested an international observer force to supervise any ceasefire. This was rejected by the US and the Rebels.  We may choose not to believe him but the fact is …….that is what he said. We may not like him but it is a matter for the Libyans who thy choose to govern and what the system is.

He was not speaking about massacring civilians in Benghazi. It might be important to know that the head of the main hospital was hung by the Rebels publicly as were 2 policemen likewise lynched Little wonder anybody that might express the slightest resistance to the rebels might remain silent. Can anyone say the takeover of Benghazi is democratic?

Something else puzzles me is this. Is it legal or acceptable in Australia France, Britain or the United States to take up arms, torch buildings, kill unarmed civilians and commit acts of terrorism? No, neither is it in Libya.

This issue isn’t about Gaddafi. This isn’t about democracy. This is about control and about oil.

Oil paths

From the Guardian 22.03 2011

The day’s events around Ajdabiya provided further evidence that the rebels stand little hope of defeating Gaddafi’s forces militarily on their own and are relying on coalition air strikes to destroy, or at least greatly weaken, the ability of the government’s army to fight. Some of the rebels mistake the air strikes for their own victories. They dance on the burned out tanks, wave V for victory signs and declare that they are beating Gaddafi.

But the revolutionaries outside Ajdabiya only advanced because they expected to move into the town with little resistance. The rebel leadership Adil Hasi, the man in charge of what the revolutionary leadership regards as the regular rebel forces  frankly admits that it cannot defeat the government militarily on its own and acknowledges that if it cannot take a relatively small town unaided, its forces are unlikely to be able to seize the better defended cities further west – leaving France, Britain and the US to decide if they are going to fight the insurgents’ war for them by clearing the way for the revolutionaries to advance.

So Who is breaking the Ceasefire?  more from the Guardian

Alongside the military campaign, the rebels’ political leadership says it intends to encourage fresh popular uprisings in cities still under Gaddafi’s control. But it may find it hard to persuade Libyans to take the risk unless they have the assurance that rebel forces are close enough to come to their rescue. Members of the revolutionary council have already said they fear that the result of a limited air campaign will be military stalemate and a divided Libya. For that reason, they have called for an escalation of the air strikes to wipe out Gaddafi’s army as a fighting force.

Anarchy not a democracy in Benghazi

There is growing alarm in Benghazi in particular at growing disorder by young men with guns who have claimed the authority for themselves to set up arbitrary road blocks, order people around and fire their weapons for the fun of it.

When the National Front for the Salvation of Libya called for a day of anger Feb 17^th how is it that the protesters were spontaneously armed, had flags that  the British created Idris  monarchy, and knew precisely how to take over the key buildings in the City of Benghazi? They even had heavy weapons

rebels fire "light weapons at gove troops March 9

President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron kept deliberately twisting and misquoting the words of Gaddafi and taking them entirely out of context so that anything they now say or do should not give you confidence that they are either reasonable or competent to perform their roles. What they have done is to join President Sarkozy in committing an act of WAR against Libya as NATO strikes against Nth Africa and turns its might against the Arab world.

The Crusade has begun, Libya is but the first stage but the consequences for safety from terrorism in the world are diminished. They have no idea who they are arming. They made the same error in Afghanistan against the Soviets. They have done so in Egypt that game is a long way from being played out. The US created the conditions for what they face today in Iran and Pakistan

The adage in Iraq was today a child, tomorrow a terrorist so blast his face off him, blast his limbs off him and destroy his family. That is why cluster bombs were dropped in civilian areas in Iraq and they will be dropped again in Libya..

Then the oil companies will move back in.

The adage in Libya seems to be protecting the Libyan people by allying with Al-Qaeda, and instigating a revolt in the oil-rich separatist area of Cyrenaica, with Benghazi being its capital, installing a Washington-friendly regime…then the oil companies move in. Fanciful as it may seem the Norwegians should not be so cocky either. They had their quisling in World War 2 and while the government there owns the oil it doesn’t have to remain like that as the known reserves of oil run out.

Looking for a Victim

The people of Libya, have enjoyed free housing, free education including university free health care, free social benefits Libya will become a puppet of the West, its resources plundered as the new Libyan oligarchs (like in Russia) are rewarded with positions of power and industrial control.

When I set out on the journey of this blog I wrote (see posts “about” and “welcome”) to an “escalator of the hill”   I stated I wanted it to be a place for an exchange of ideas and to be democratic. To that end I now include a Saudi funded CIA organised propaganda video released just 4 days ago……just in time for the bombing.

It is an amazing piece of work extremely well produced with simply perfect backing music.  It shows some footage from 1911, 1922 with the Italian occupation and later refers to General (at that time) Montgomery as being a world leader It has a moment of  pure symbolism with the meeting of 3 Berber tribesmen and 3 armored cars I guess this  is to depict modern Libya under the monarchy.  It portrays the establishment of the  Libyan Monarchy that was imposed by the British ( a coup of sorts)…and at this  point in the film  would be laughable were it not for the seriousness of  the situation today. We are treated to a young Queen Elizabeth Prince Philip and the independence celebrations.

You will also see black Libyan soldiers  that put lie to the allegations of black mercenaries in Libya today.  Libya has always had a black population.

The film leaves NOTHING out.  There is nothing to report on free housing, advances in health   free education or the emancipation of women simply because there was none to include. These advances did not come until after the coup and when Idris was deposed. A few film images of Idris are shown with Nasser just to complete the scene  and fool those who might not otherwise believe this is utter nonsense. It a beautiful bit of marketing though.

In 1951, Libya if not the most was almost the poorest nation in the world? Did you know that today it has the highest Human Development Index (HDI) in Africa and the  Arab world?

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary composite index that measures a country’s average achievements in three basic aspects of human development: health, knowledge, and income. It was first developed by the late Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq with the collaboration of the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and other leading development thinkers for the first Human Development Report in 1990. It was introduced as an alternative to conventional measures of national development, such as level of income and the rate of economic growth.

The Human Development concept

Human Development is a development paradigm that is about much more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests.

People are the real wealth of nations. Development is thus about expanding the choices people have. It is much more than economic growth

Fundamental to enlarging these choices is building human capabilities; the range of things that people can do or be in life. The most basic needs for human development is to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community. I think you might call that democracy.

Without these, many choices are simply not available, and many opportunities in life remain inaccessible.

Here's Johnny

Democracy isn’t being able to vote yourself poor, or out of a job and into unemployment or into debt to get educated or be free to be bankrupted with huge medical bills or to be homeless

Have  the US implemented free health care schemes, are not the British cutting back on theirs.  They see health care as a profit centre, they maintain  health care as  a business. Does the US or UK or Australia  distribute land for free and donate agricultural equipment for free?.

What we  do is  impose tariffs on imports of raw materials and food stuffs from poor countries.  It is then sold back to them at inflated prices tying them to loans they can’t afford back. The US and UK   pay and give subsidies to their own farmers. This is all done while pretending to follow the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Here is some of the data as at 2010 from the Human Development Index .Obviously should the bombing continue we will see a destruction of the gains Libya has made since 1951.

Under each of the headings below you will find some fascinating data; drawing comparison between the world’s richest bankrupt, the US and Libya.

You will find the data most revealing. I have highlighted the “top scores”

Education

Expenditure on education (% of GDP) US 5.5 UK 3.4  Libya 3.4

Average years of adult education in years US 12.4 UK9.5 Libya 7.3

Expected Years of schooling of childrenUS 15.7  UK15.9 Libya 16.5

Population least secondary education, female/male ratio US1.009 UK 1.015 Libya 1.264

Adult literacy rate aged 15+ US n.a.  UK n.a  Libya 88.3 9 It  is interesting this data isn’t available from either the US or UK

Combined gross enrollment ratio of both sexes in education US 92.4  UK 89.2 Libya 95.8 show equality of gender access to education

Internet Users per 100 people

US 75.9 UK 76.0 Libya 5.1

Green House Gas emissions

Carbon dioxide emissions by tonnes per capitaUS 19.0 UK 9.4 Libya 9.2

Unemployment US 9.8 UK 10.6 Libya less than 1%

Security

Homicide rate per 100,000 US 5.2 UK4.8 Libya 2.2

Robbery rate per 100,000 US 142 UK 282 Libya *18

Health

Maternal mortality ratio deaths of women per, 000 births US 24 UK 12 Libya 11

Life expectancy US 74.5 UK 79.8 Libya.74.5

Expenditure on health, public % of GDP US 7.1 UK 6.9 Libya 1.9

Under-five mortality per 1,000 births US 8 UK 6 Libya 17

Overall Averages of Human Development index in 2010

Libya 0.755 Arab States average 0.590 World average 0.624 US 0.902 UK 0. 849

What all the data above shows us that Libya was enjoying great advances in the living conditions of it entire population…..is this what we want to destroy just as was done in Iraq with 1 million deaths and an unstable regime where we know the Islamists are waiting in the wings

How does the US and UK   justify the attacks on civilian targets in the last 3 night’s raids?

These are war crimes.

3 medical facilities were hit?

What kind of “dictator” distributes arms to a million citizens? Where are the no-fly zone over Bahrain Gaza and Yemen, where unarmed civilians are being bombed rocketed or shot daily by their friends?

Why don’t you explain to your people, as they are faced with  public spending cuts, how much it costs to take part in this act of war?

Do the British people know that the cost per aircraft per day is in the region of 200.000 GBP of UK taxpayers’ money.

How can they justify spending that amount of money on bombing hospitals,  they spending for the UK National Health Service?

The truth is:

The “rebellion” in Libya is based around Islamic fundamentalists in the historically separatist hot spot of Benghazi.  The “rebellion” has been instigated by the West. It failed, and when the military forces of Libya after the initial surprise of the uprising won back the initiative. The US saw the chance slipping away to control the main centers of oil production.  They refused the Russian-sponsored resolution for a ceasefire and they tried to push through a Resolution allowing a full-scale military invasion.

This was quashed by Russia, China, India, Brazil and Germany in the drafting process, All  they got was a no-fly zone and permission to use military force to protect civilians [both sides]. But the Libyan authorities are not fighting “civilians”. They are fighting Islamic terrorists.

Al Qaeda and Libya

Daily Telegraph ( The unofficial Conservative paper not recognised for independent views) had this headline and article 20 March2011

“Libya: the West and al-Qaeda on the same side”

“Statements of support for Libya’s revolution by al-Qaeda and leading Islamists have led to fears that military action by the West might be playing into the hands of its ideological enemies. WikiLeaks cables, independent analysts and reporters have all identified supporters of Islamist causes among the opposition to Col Gaddafi’s regime, particularly in the towns of Benghazi and Dernah. An al-Qaeda leader of Libyan origin, Abu Yahya al-Libi, released a statement backing the [Libyan] insurrection a week ago, while Yusuf Qaradawi, the Qatar-based, Muslim Brotherhood-linked theologian issued a fatwa authorising Col Gaddafi’s military entourage to assassinate him. But they also agree that the leading roles in the revolution are played by a similar cross-section of society as that in Egypt next door – liberals, nationalists, those with personal experience of regime brutality and Islamists who subscribe to democratic principles.

The WikiLeaks cables, initially revealed by The Daily Telegraph and dating from 2008, identified Dernah in particular as a breeding ground for fighters in a number of causes, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

So Who is Abu Yahya al-Libi

Al-Libi is a Libyan who was captured by allied forces in the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 . The Americans  who kept him in  Bagram Air Base prison. American counter-terrorism analysts confirmed that al-Libi was a member of  Al Quada.  In July 10, 2005 al-Libi was one of several high-profile Bagram captives who managed [allowed] to escape . On November 4, 2005, he appeared in a video on the United Arab emirates (  of the Arab League) television station al-Arabiya, boasting that he had escaped from Bagram. He was again listed as an escapee by the US Department of Defense as “Most Wanted”

On March 12, 2011 al-Libi urged his Libyan countrymen on video to overthrow Gaddafi’s regime and establish Islamic rule, expanding the terror network’s attempts to capitalize on the wave of unrest sweeping the region

In response to this Al Qaeda threat Presidents Obama and Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron now have the murders of innocent people on their hands. These men are responsible for the indiscriminate use of military resources against all military targets airborne, static or now against all mobile ground forces and  civilian targets that get in the way All this is way outside of the  outside the scope of the UN Resolution.

Why do I write about this Because I am angry that our ABC SBS   Kelly Cabe  Knight all fail to see need for truth in reporting. How is it a right-wing paper like the Telegraph get it right? I care about the children of the world who are always the ones to suffer the most their mothers who lose their sons daughter and husbands.

War is a bad business anytime.  When it is illegal and includes War Crimes it makes it worse…When we find our selves on the side of Al Quada something is going terribly wrong.  I’ll reveal all I know about the Arab League ASAP

I still intend to do my feel good posts but this North African war had to take priority I am but a tiny voice but I am glad to say that since the start of this blog 5 weeks ago allowing and removing the numbers of 2 odd days of  rogue views causing spikes in visitor numbers. The number of unique visitors has just passed

Future Posts on a lighter note

I have my Bolegnese recipe to post all complte with pictures.Done

Yes my Cats and my new dog Bruin 2.Pictures ready

My workshop and my modeling,My motorcycles. Done

The renovations to my little  house ( perhaps that is a bit naff)

Oh the DVD of Cross Roads 2010  3/4 done Music of the North African Resistance(pre the Libyan crisis) Notes done Video captured

And now my reconnection with CLAN (Care Leavers Australia) an organisation for all who have been “in care”  a new work in progress.

Must do another post on in Search of Stupidity. If you are new here check back on my stuff on Glen Beck

I will add footnotes regarding my “family federal magistrates property matter” and to get my solicitor to get hold of the other side again. Have to follow up on  the defamation. Which reminds me I must now write to the Human rights lawyer in Geneva with a please F @#&*!^g  explain.

Update April 8

Have written twice with no response. No surprises there guess you would reply if  it wasn’t you or even if it was you might refute that what you had written wasn’t defamatory…on the other hand you might believe that to ignore it is the appropriate way to handle it which indeed it might be but for the fact the person writing to you is obviously aggrieved about it and from a simple “humanitarian” stand point and given that the person works as a Human Rights Lawyer it would not be unreasonable for them to reply with a “it’s really not me”.

Their  arrogance of neither type of response is tantamount to an admission of wrong doing. We will see if they choose to remain silent as to be sure I will flag their misbehaviour or mal-practice to their supervisors and will name them publicly….I have no fear

Overall for me life is very good but every day I am deeply saddened  over Libya…

Cheers Now Davie

What was vintage Gaddafi was also classic behaviour for dictators.

“They are usually charming, charismatic and intelligent,” wrote James Fallon, an American neuroscientist, in Psychology Today.

[np-related]

“They brim with self-confidence and independence, and exude sexual energy. They are also extremely self-absorbed, masterful liars, compassionless, often sadistic and possess a boundless appetite for power.”

Col. Gaddafi was “paranoid, narcissistic, power-hungry and vain,” he said.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

After studying the behaviour of dictators, Mr. Fallon determined that genes, upbringing, abnormalities in the brain and a lack of empathy all played a role in forming such a person.

And, he concluded, “It is no coincidence that all dictators are men.”

As a dictator, Col. Gaddafi was both dangerous and eccentric.

“You’d have to go back to Nero or Caligula to find someone who was able to impose their own personal eccentricities on a state to the degree that Gaddafi did,” Anthony Cordesman of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies told The Associated Press this week.

The Libyan leader had a hang-up with titles. A jumped-up army captain, who promoted himself to colonel immediately after he carried out a bloodless coup against King Idris in 1969, he later abolished all ranks in his army above colonel to discourage possible coup plotters.

Generally, he liked to be known as “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution.”

Many dictators try to create a cult of personality and favour grandiloquent titles and honours.

Idi Amin of Uganda started his working life as a cook’s assistant in the Ugandan colonial army, but ended up as “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular and uncrowned King of Scotland.”

Among other titles, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il boasts of being “Guardian Deity of the Planet.”

Saparmurat Niyazov, the dictator who ruled Turkmenistan until he died in 2006, renamed himself “Turkmenbashi” (Head of all Turkmen). He also had a habit of naming things after himself — including streets, a breed of horse, the longest canal in the world, a city, ships, a planet in the constellation Taurus, a crater on the Moon, a mountain and the month of January.

Col. Gaddafi tried to justify his dictatorship by creating a philosophy that denied he was even a ruler.

His Third Universal Theory was a blueprint for a welfare state in which there were would be no laws, no money, no government and no private enterprise. He published his theory in an 83-page volume called The Green Book and made all Libyan school children study it, much as Chinese communists made everyone study Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book of sayings during the Cultural Revolution.

Personal dictatorships are riddled with the pathologies of tyranny as individual leaders impose their eccentricities on their countries.

In 1977, Jean-Bedel Bokassa proclaimed himself Emperor of the Central African Empire (now Republic) and modelled his coronation after Napoleon Bonaparte’s

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, decided to launch a campaign of pro-African awareness. He renamed his country Zaire in 1971 and himself Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga, which roughly translates as “all-conquering warrior who, because of his endurance and will to win, goes from triumph to triumph leaving fire in his wake.”

As part of his Africanization campaign, Mobutu regularly wore a distinctive leopard skin cap — and banned everyone else in Zaire from doing the same. He also ordered men not to wear Western suits.

Col. Gaddafi had a similar penchant for peculiar clothing, leaning toward long flowing robes, gaudy military uniforms with gold epaulettes and lots of medals, and distinctive headgear and sunglasses.

The urge for dictators to distinguish themselves through their appearance and by ordering the behaviour of others is almost universal.

Turkmenbashi banned make-up, gold teeth, ballet, recorded music and lip-synching at concerts. He forbade men to have beards and long hair, and ordered schoolgirls to wear their hair in braids.

Hastings Banda, leader of Malawi from 1966 to 1994, ordered men to cut their hair and prohibited women from wearing pants.

Psychologists have sought for decades to explain the dictator’s mind. In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, which developed into the Central Intelligence Agency, commissioned a secret profile called A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler.

Mr. Fallon, who has studied brain-scans of psychopathic serial killers, was asked to plumb the minds of dictators after this year’s uprisings in the Arab Spring.

Relationships, the brain, genes and early childhood all contributed to making a dictator, he concluded.

“Somewhat predictably, dictators do not relate in a normal manner to other people in a person-to-person, empathetic way. They may associate themselves with ‘people’ as a whole or ‘people’ in a tribal or abstract pan-world sense (as Hitler may have had with pan-Germanism, or Stalin with pan-Slavic sentiments), or even with ‘the world,’ ” he wrote this year in Psychology Today.

Abnormalities in the lower frontal lobe and the amygdala, the spot that regulates fear, rage, and sexual desire, play a central role.

“In some individuals, the amygdala can be so poorly developed that it creates an extreme pattern of dependency.

So what satisfies a normal person — such as reading a good book or watching the sunset — does nothing for someone with an underdeveloped amygdala. For some people, this means a greater tendency toward drug and alcohol addiction, and severe painful withdrawal that gets progressively worse over time, leading to malignant dependent behaviours.

“Sadists … become addicted to torture and killing; dictators get high on power, an insatiable drive that gets progressively worse, or malignant with time.”

Men are also more likely to carry the “warrior gene” (MAO-A) associated with aggressive behaviour.

Mr. Fallon added, “To develop into a dictator — in addition to theoretically having a hefty percentage of the 12 to 15 particularly aggressive gene variants and a dysfunctional frontal lobe and amygdala — an individual has usually also been seriously abused in childhood, and/or lost important caretakers, such as biological parents.”

In an interview, Michael Kraus, a social-personality psychologist at the University of California San Francisco who studies power and domination, said power frees people to “be exactly how they are at their core.”

That means nice people will be “extra nice” in power, while aggressive, deceitful people will be uber-aggressive and wildly deceitful.

“Our research shows that power gives people the freedom to express their true traits and attributes,” Mr. Kraus said.

“Nice people are very, very agreeable when they’re in power. In the case of a dictator, absolute power allows them to express themselves as more hostile and less pro-socially oriented. Power basically lets you behave how you’d like to behave without fear or external influences.”

National Post, with files from Kathryn Blaze Carlson
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com

It appears that Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi may have been handed down his final verdict by NATO rebels, but it’s perhaps an even more bloody awful fate already suffered by a morally detached western civilization.

The man who liberated his country from the tyrannical monarchy of King Idris back in 1969… was tried and sentenced by bullet today.

Gaddafi modeled himself after Omar Mukhtar, The Lion of the Desert, the only other man who has led a genuine, independent Libyan resistance, fighting against a brutal Italian colonization in 1927. Yet, our media tell us he’s just another dead tyrant.

Unable to conceal her philistine nature, pathetic US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity to crack a predictably disingenuous joke. When hearing the news of Gaddafi’s death she cackled as she told reporters, “We came, we saw, he died!”

 News clip of Hillary Clinton’s cackle over the death of Libya’s Gaddafi

This has become the new narrative in the US and western Europe now, where foreign leaders and other non-state actors with brown skin are given lengthy trials through press briefings by suited politicians in places like Washington, London and Paris, echoed by the corporate media until an antagonist is born for public consumption.

Following the White House’s comical staged hoax of SEAL Team 6′s gallant raid on long-dead Osama bin Laden, and with no evidence to show it actually happened other than President Obama’s TV speeches- we get the next public assassination. After all, Obama’s far-fetched tale of the bin-Laden mission somehow vindicated all those innocent lives ruined by US incarceration and outright torture of thousands of young men since the War on Terror officially began in 2001.

Al Jazeera will no doubt play the shaky cell phone video of the man being stripped and dragged through the streets of Sirte by the NATO rebel mob. Somehow they believe, Gaddafi’s brutal post-mortem will vindicate their careless efforts and somehow make right the thousands of innocents who have perished- so that Libya can finally become part of the globalist, debt-based, neoliberal economic IMF system.

The west and its banking elite have nothing left to plunder other than middle class pension funds and incomes at home, so they are relying on plundering countries in the east and south in order to refill its sadly diminishing coffers. This is the only way to get their hands on any real liquidity or assets.

JUSTICE? Gaddafi could never be put on trial by the West, it's a stage they cannot afford to give him.

The same treatment was given to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Like Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden, he worked hand in hand with America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 in order to help western intelligence agencies achieve their operational goals, and thus the foreign policy objectives of the US, Great Britain and Israel. Grainy cell phone videos of Saddam’s circus execution somehow vindicated those in the west who liquidated so many innocent Iraqi lives since 1991, and arguably before.

This is the new trend in dispensing due process, in a declining western civilization where blood-lust suffices for justice.

After the protracted media trials of both Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, globalist power-brokers will never allow their war criminals to stand trial and spill the beans on all their dirty little secrets.

Over the last few decades, both Americans and western Europeans have become well-trained media consumers, and absorb their talking points much in the same way that grade school children dutifully repeat after their teachers and walk in single file. As adults, their teachers are CNN, FOX, the BBC, and the newest addition to the state information corps, US CENTCOM’s own Al Jazeera. None of them have any genuine moral or ethical perspective left in their editorial vision. The corporate networks will reserve any real humanitarian compassion for a handful of trapped miners, baby seals, missing Caucasian children and Amanda Knox.

Our new teachers have taught the dutifully minded among us that when the mob labels a head of state or non-state actor as a tyrant, then regime change must take place, and that this man deserves to die. They have taught us that one dead US soldier is worth more in headlines than 100 dead brown-skinned Iraqis, Afghanis, Palestinians, or Libyans- women and children included. That is the overwhelming power of the 21st century media.

Will Libya have anything near the stability it enjoyed over the last 30 years? Will its people enjoy the mountain of state benefits available to them under the Gaddafi rein? Will Libyans be able to retain ownership of their country’s bounty of natural resources, and see the state reinvesting its profits back into their country for the benefit of future generations?

History has taught us that the answer to each and every one of these questions is of course…no.

History has written all over the sands of  the Maghreb of North Africa, and Libya in particular. It has always been under the thumb of one empire or another- from the Romans, the Spanish, the Vatican’s Knights of Malta, the Ottomans, and Mussolini’s Italy.

Libya’s first brush with America came in the early 19th century, when war broke out between the United States and what was then  referred to as Tripolitania, in what came to be known as the Barbary Wars. Only this time around the Barbary pirates are on the other side of the fighting, and they are known the world over by the name of ‘NATO’.

It’s only fitting that this latest chapter of history should be written as follows…

It was clear from day one that the Anglo-American empire, along with its clients like Qatar, were actively supporting and planning to bring destabilization to the country. From the very first days of the civil war in January 2011, before the shell casings had even hit the ground, western envoys and consultants worked with known al-Qaida fighters and criminals in Libya to form a new NTC government, a new central bank and a new state oil holding company. NATO were deployed to give brutal air support to these new gangs of rebel paramilitaries, and for nearly 10 months, both those groups killed, tortured, raped and looted everything in their path.

Meanwhile, offshore transnational corporations from the US, Europe and Qatar carved up the country’s assets. Months followed years of instability, infighting and acts of internal retribution followed. The poor became poorer, the rich became richer, organized crime blossomed and thousands of middle class Libyans were allowed to immigrate to the UK, France and Italy.

This would come to be known as Libya’s liberation.

What it means

The UN issued the citation, and NATO came in with the tow truck. Make no mistake, in the real world, NATO is the USA and the USA is NATO. It’s a politically correct way of using military force without being seen to be acting alone as an imperial aggressor. But what about the NTC’s death squads, the theft, the rape, the torture and destruction of citizens’ property, business, and whole lives?

To pass the buck a little further, NATO’s goals and end-game is handed over to Libya’s NTC, this way everyone’s asses are covered.

Politicians in Washington, London and Paris should be proud. They got everything they wanted, and with no dirt under their nails.

If no one in the US, UK, France, the UN or NATO’s technicians of death are held accountable for the sacking and looting of Libya- the crime of the 21st century, then expect that they will simply move forward, and do it again, and again. So who’s next? Syria?

There is no more moral high ground, no more western values, no beliefs to use as a back-stop for western civilization.

Was Gaddafi guilty? Is that it then, a bullet?

He will never be afforded the same trial that anyone reading this article would expect as their god-given right. So what makes any among us believe that we deserve any of these so-called rights we think we enjoy in the west?

Meanwhile, the US and UK corporate media can’t stop parading those barbaric pictures on the front page in exactly the same manner as Libya’s NATO rebels where parading corpses around town. And this is what 2000 years of civilization brought?

Who are we kidding?

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