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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(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111024com4.html
