DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/24/2011
The man was never in any official position in the Libyan government, yet the West and its propaganda machine often describe him as a “dictator” and “tyrant.” Moammar Kadhafi, “Brotherly Leader of the Revolution (Al Fateh),” began as a young officer with the “Free Officers Corps” and built a movement around an ideology of “direct democracy” (as expressed in The Green Book and his “Third International Theory”) that became the building block of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
In the 43 years of Kadhafi’s stewardship, the Libyan people achieved the highest per capita income of $12,000, along with the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Their government was able to build the $25-billion Great Manmade Water Project that tapped the Sahara aquifers to supply 6.6 million cubic meters of water daily to the Libyan people, and eventually allow the greening of the Sahara desert. Libya was also able to keep intact 144 tons of gold reserves and $50 billion in assets deposited in Western banks.
Kadhafi was the visionary who had prepared for years to introduce the gold dinar, using his country’s 144 tons of gold reserves to become the African currency — beginning with its use in the trading of oil in Africa, to eventually become the basis upon which an African Central Bank is to be organized. These would have pushed through if not for the Nato attacks on his regime.
Under Kadhafi, Libya had no debt; now, the Nato-led NTC (National Transition or Traitors’ Council) has borrowed heavily from Western countries against the very Libyan assets deposited with them during Kadhafi’s era, with payment to be made from future oil contracts. These countries, in turn, are readying contracts on behalf of their companies for the reconstruction of Libya; the cost of which will be drawn from the Libyan assets they seized (a situation that obviously the new puppet Libyan government can do nothing about). Also, these Western powers are now said to be looting Libya’s gold reserves — this, as French, Italian and US companies are carving up the Libyan oil industry for themselves.
Indeed, Kadhafi had shared Libya’s oil revenues with many in Africa in the pursuit of his pan-African vision, along with other revolutionary movements in the world. In fact, one of the first visits made by the iconic Nelson Mandela outside of his native South Africa, right after his release from 27 years in prison, was to Libya’s Colonel Kadhafi to thank him for his support of the African National Congress’ long and arduous struggle.
It must be remembered that the African Union (AU) continued to call for negotiations and elections to resolve the Libyan crisis while protesting the many gross violations by the US and Nato of the parameters of the UN “No fly zone.” I even recall South African President Jacob Zuma condemning the attacks before hinting that armed support was somehow discussed among African member-nations to come to the aid of a northern neighbor battered by an eight-month assault. The AU must now be hurting terribly from all that has happened.
Still, there is a constant debate as to what the US-Nato motive in the attack on Kadhafi really is. Divergent views say that it is either about oil, the gold dinar, or the African Central Bank; but I see it as all of the above and more. I subscribe to several seasoned observers whose views run along the lines of Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar’s. In his article, “The US power grab in Africa,” he writes, “The big picture remains the Pentagon’s Africom (US military command) spreading its militarized tentacles against the lure of Chinese soft power in Africa, which goes something like this: in exchange for oil and minerals, we build anything you want, and we don’t try to sell you ‘democracy for dummies.’”
Moreover, such views hew even closer to Centre for Research on Globalization contributor John Pilger’s “Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels” treatise, which says, “Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilization, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams… Libya under Moammar Kadhafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel,” further revealing that, according to French newspaper Libération, “the west’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ was explained… in a proposal to the French government by the ‘rebel’ National Transitional Council… (whereby) France was offered 35 percent of Libya’s gross national oil production ‘in exchange’ (the term used) for ‘total and permanent’… American plans for Africa (which) are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already (operating) in 75 countries (are to be used)... As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s ‘defense strategy’ plan, America simply wishes to rule the world. That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the ‘Son of Africa’… what matters is not so much the color of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.”
Kadhafi, who was the visionary for a new, independent, and progressive Africa, stood in the way of the Western powers’ re-conquest of the continent — and the world — through control of expanding territories and minerals, including oil, in a campaign of constriction against the only real, strategic threat to the reestablishment of their uni-polar world. China, with its population and economic/technological potential, is set to become the world’s No. 1 soon — a prospect that they must surely dread.
Finally, let us close with this message from Gerald A. Perreira of the International Revolutionaries Movement, part of an international battalion defending the Al Fateh revolution: “The Lion of Africa is dead… he has left millions of cubs in the bushes and in the desert. They can kill the man but they can never kill his profound ideas. His legacy is only made stronger by his martyrdom.”
And that legacy lives on.
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