Naked, Bloody Imperialism or “We Came, We Saw, He Died”

By Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley

Among the many comments we have read and received on the alleged death of Gaddafi, the one most often repeated goes something like this: ‘Gaddafi was a brutal dictator who deserved what he got‘. The widely-held belief (at least in Western nations) that Gaddafi was a ‘brutal dictator’ is the result of over 30 years of (primarily) US, British and French propaganda against the former Libyan leader. The reasons for this long-running propaganda campaign are many, but chief among them is the fact that Gaddafi was not only fiercely independent as regards his native land, but he persistently sought to bring financial independence to other African nations.

It’s The Media Stupid!

The average person in the street seems to find it difficult to grasp the idea that the ‘national interests’ of democratic governments often run counter to democratic ideals and that, in pursuing such interests, governments will attempt to maintain the appearance of remaining faithful to democratic ideals. Another way to say this is that governments will lie about their undemocratic activities in order to maintain a facade of democracy and thereby avoid disturbing the population. (For those who may have, understandably, forgotten the core democratic principles, check this link for a short refresher course.)

The maintenance of a democratic façade while pursuing undemocratic ‘interests’ is today only possible with the committed and almost unanimous connivance of the mainstream media, which unfailingly disseminates government propaganda to the people, and which the people in turn accept as gospel truth in the belief that the press is free and independent of government control. But virtually all Western mainstream media outlets today are owned by a handful of powerful corporations and mega-wealthy individuals who count high level members of Western governments among their close friends and confidants. The truth of this can easily be verified by anyone with a computer and a little time to do some research of their own. The extent of the actual freedom of the ‘free press’ can also be ascertained by revisiting the way in which the Western media blindly accepted and reported as truth government lies prior to and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is reasonable then to conclude that the Western media, by and large, acts as a ‘Ministry of Propaganda’ for Western governments, especially in situations where government(s) are pursuing policies that are at variance with democratic ideals.

So, in light of all that, let’s consider the question: “was Gaddafi really a ‘brutal dictator’?”

Gaddafi’s Real Crimes

Throughout his reign, Gaddafi insisted on a much larger (and fairer) share of his country’s oil profits than multinational oil companies were used to accepting. Indeed, in a 2009 talk given to students at Georgetown University, Gaddafi threatened to kick Western oil companies out of Libya altogether by nationalising its oil and natural gas. What is beyond dispute is that Gaddafi used his nation’s oil wealth to turn Libya into the most progressive and modern of all African nations. In a 2007 African executive magazine it was noted that Libya, “unlike other oil producing countries such as Nigeria [where major Western oil companies have a stranglehold on the government], utilised the revenue from its oil to develop its country.”

Throughout most of Gaddafi’s rule, Libyan citizens enjoyed free health care, free education and free electricity and water. Car purchases for every citizen were 50% subsidized by the government. Gas in Gaddafi’s Libya was $0.14 per liter. Under this ‘brutal dictator’, the mother of every newborn child received $5,000. All these, and many other social benefits under Gaddafi, make the supposedly socialist systems of France and other European nations look like predatory capitalist regimes. Today, with Gaddafi gone, Libya’s generous social benefits and the formerly high standard of living of its citizens are under serious threat from the new pro-Western puppet regime.

Gaddafi was also instrumental in establishing the African Union. He invested heavily and generously, to the tune of $6 billion, in many other African nations. Throughout Africa, hospitals, schools, hotels and roads bear Gaddafi’s name as a sign of gratitude to the ‘brutal dictator’. Libyan investments have helped to connect most of Africa by telephone, television, radio broadcasting, etc. Many major African companies, in which Gaddafi had invested via the ‘Libya Arab Africa Investment Portfolio’, now face financial ruin as Libyan oil money is diverted to the West under Libya’s new rulers.

But undoubtedly the greatest threat posed by Gaddafi to NATO warmongers was his efforts to fast-track the creation of an African Monetary Fund and an African Central Bank and to establish the gold dinar as a pan-African currency (Libya has 144 tons of gold with a population of jut 6 million, no external debt and $150 billion in cash reserves). Gaddafi’s idea was that African and Muslim nations would join together to create this new currency and use it to purchase oil and other resources to the exclusion of the dollar and other currencies. While a Russia Today report called it “an idea that would shift the economic balance of the world”, Gaddafi’s plans for a radical financial overhaul of African economies would undoubtedly have sounded the death knell for IMF looting of African economies, not to mention the ‘CFA Franc’, a colonial currency tied to the Euro and the French central bank and used in twelve formerly French-ruled African countries (hence the unbridled enthusiasm with which the French government joined the fray).

Peace Maker

Writing in April 2011 for the London Evening Post, writer Jean-Paul Pougala had this to say about Gaddafi:

“For most Africans, Gaddafi is a generous man, a humanist, known for his unselfish support for the struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. If he had been an egotist, he wouldn’t have risked the wrath of the West to help the ANC both militarily and financially in the fight against apartheid. This was why Mandela, soon after his release from 27 years in jail, decided to break the UN embargo and travel to Libya on 23 October 1997. Mandela didn’t mince his words when the former US president Bill Clinton said the visit was an ‘unwelcome’ one: “No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do.” He added, “Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi, they are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.”

A “generous humanist”? Dare we say a genuine socialist? The late African freedom fighter, Kwame Ture, further characterised Gaddafi as ‘a diamond in a cesspool of African misleaders‘. “African misleaders” installed and financed by Western governments.

Writing in September this year in the Guardian, Julian Borger and Terry Macalister pointed out that Western oil companies had planned to carve up Libyan oil before the so-called ‘revolution’. Are we surprised? Is it mere coincidence that the NATO bombing campaign began on the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq? The Egyptian uprising was more or less legitimate based on the psychopathic policies of a real ‘brutal dictator’ – Hosni Mubarak – who had brought millions of Egyptians to the brink of starvation. And take note how Mubarak was dealt with in comparison to Gaddafi. But no such conditions existed in socialist Libya.

The plain truth is that there was no widespread popular revolution against Gaddafi; there were only ever hired mercenaries, a well-orchestrated Western media campaign, which played out a script dictated to it from start to finish, heavy infiltration by military intelligence agents of the US and European countries, and NATO bombs. Lots of NATO bombs.

Media War Lies

Perhaps all of this helps us to understand why, in July this year, huge crowds of Libyans thronged the streets of Tripoli in support of Gaddafi and why recent polls suggested that 90% of the Libyan population supported their ‘brutal dictator’. Perhaps we can also understand why images such as the one below are being touted by the Western media as ‘crowds of Libyans queuing to ‘gawp’ at the ‘brutal dictator’s dead body’:

See here for more ‘crowd’ pictures.

It should come as no surprise then to realise that allegations of ‘war crimes’ leveled at pro-Gaddafi forces and that Gaddafi “bombed his own people” during the NATO bombing campaign were simply a continuation of the decades-long demonisation of the Libyan Leader, and were designed to cover up the fact that, just as we saw during the prelude to the ‘humanitarian war to save Kosovars’ in 1999 (when “tremendous efforts were undertaken to discover evidence of war crimes“), it was NATO bombs which took the lives of thousands of Libyan civilians. During a bombing raid on 30 April, Gaddafi’s son, Saif el-Arab, 29, as well as three of his grandchildren, were killed. The four-month-old daughter of Gaddafi’s daughter Aisha was among those murdered.

Down The Rat Hole

Was it really Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who was dragged out of that ‘rat hole’? The story of Gaddafi’s ‘death’ strikes me as a little too similar to that of Saddam Hussein (pulled from a ‘spider hole’, ‘hiding like a rat’, etc.) and the images and videos that are doing the rounds on the mainstream media sites are far too grainy to be proof of anything. At least one of them (below) is clearly a doctored version of an image purportedly taken at the site of Osama Bin Laden’s death, which in itself could be taken as evidence that the same people were involved in both staged events.

Look at ‘Gaddafi’s’ left shoulder. The pictures of the dead men at ‘Bin Laden’s compound‘ contained one of a man with a toy ‘water gun’ beneath him. The gun was bright green, the blood was dark red, and the man wore a white shirt and had dark black hair. He also had one hand across his chest.

Look familiar? The CIA photoshopper simply flipped the image and put Gaddafi’s face on it. The water gun was moved slightly so that the orange on the gun is no longer visible. (Hat-tip to Pundit Press for pointing this out.)

The real Muammar al-Gaddafi has some rather distinctive facial features:

One distinctive feature is ptosis. Also called ‘drooping eyelid’, ptosis is caused by weakness of the muscle responsible for raising the eyelid, damage to the nerves that control those muscles, or looseness of the skin of the upper eyelids. Whether a genetic trait or a result of aging or plastic surgery, Gaddafi had it. The other distinctive feature is some marked ‘wrinkles’ extending diagonally from the corner of his eyes across his cheek-bones. Check any images of the ‘brutal dictator’ from the past few years and you’ll see these prominent lines in every image.

Now, check out the ‘dead Gaddafi’:

In public appearances over the past few years, Gaddafi appeared with a respectable head of hair for a man his age.

Here he is with Berlusconi in 2009:

And another image taken during the same year:

While we were unable to find any images of the back of Gaddafi’s head, we think the above two provide a decent enough view to conclude that he had a significant amount of hair covering his whole head (marked receding on the front sides notwithstanding). Compare the above images with a still from the ‘capture video’ showing the top of the head of the man who was dragged out of the ‘rat hole’:

Decades of Lies

We’re still eagerly awaiting the scenes of mass jubilation among Libyan citizens at the alleged demise of their ‘brutal dictator’. We suppose it might take a while to convince the 90% of the Libyan population which supports Gaddafi that a Western puppet government and economic occupation by Western corporations is actually a good thing.

The statements made by Western leaders about Gaddafi’s ‘crimes’ as they gloated over the brutal televised murder of some poor unfortunate in Libya were revolting, to me anyway.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said that October 20th was:

“a day to remember all of Gaddafi’s victims, from those who died in connection with the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, to Yvonne Fletcher in a London Street, and obviously all of the victims of IRA terrorism who died through their use of Libyan Semtex.We should also remember the many many Libyans who died at the hands of this brutal dictator and his regime.”

Omitted from the end of Cameron’s statement was ‘and we should also remember that I’m lying through my teeth.’

Of course, British tabloids like The Sun, are only too happy to parrot Cameron’s nonsense in typically jingoistic fashion:

But let’s have a quick review of ‘Gaddafi’s crimes’ as reported by Cameron.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland. This was clearly a false-flag operation designed to demonise Libya. See the website of the father of one of the victims, Dr. Jim Swire, for the evidence. Libya has never accepted responsibility for the bombing of Flight 103, but instead paid compensation to the families to “buy peace” i.e. attempted reintegration into the Western elite.

The murder of Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher in St. James’ Square, London, in April 1984. Blamed on Libya, there is in fact a wealth of evidence to support the theory that Fletcher was shot by a CIA/MI6 operative in an effort to, again, demonise Libya. Despite the fact that a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary spelled it out in scientific detail, Cameron is happy to propagate the lie.

The ‘victims of IRA terrorism’ through the use of Libyan Semtex. There is little doubt that, on a few occasions, the IRA leadership successfully bought Libyan weapons. There is also little doubt, however, that all alleged major IRA attacks which involved the death of civilians were the work of British intelligence. The British media’s mendacity and complicity in this lie was further exposed in September this year when it was revealed that a major British media network had taken CGI video footage from a violent computer game and passed it off as real video footage in an effort to portray Gaddafi as a supporter of terrorists:

The British network claimed it was “human error” that led to a scene from a computer game having “IRA film 1988” pasted on it as the narrator worked through a list of the past (non-existent) sins of Gaddafi for the British audience in September this year.

Also consider the following interesting link between alleged IRA attacks and the Lockerbie bombing. During the 1970s and early 1980s, one Dr. Thomas Hayes progressed to become Head of Department at the British Royal Armaments Research Establishment (RARDE). His testimony was central to the bogus Lockerbie verdict. A Parliamentary inquiry into the 1974 alleged IRA ‘Maguire Seven‘ bombing and mistrial discovered that key forensic evidence indicated the innocence of the accused. This evidence, which was known to Dr. Hayes and two RARDE colleagues, was not disclosed at the Maguire Seven trial. The Maguire Seven were eventually freed on appeal after spending fifteen years in jail.

That just gives you some small insight into the lengths to which Western governments and ‘intelligence agencies’ have gone (and are prepared to go) to ‘protect their interests’. With the mainstream media bought and paid for, global, corporate, fascist domination is a done deal unless we all wake up to the reality of the situation and start calling it for what it is – bullshit, through and through.

So yeah, Cameron et al gloating and lying to the cameras; Hilary Clinton just happening to be in Libya a few days ago and demanding Gaddafi ‘dead or alive’ one day before someone looking a bit like him is produced from a ‘rat-hole’ and then quickly executed and (soon to be) buried in a ‘secret location’ far from prying eyes; the deliberately conflicting stories of how he was killed being spread far and wide by the mainstream media; Gaddafi being feted (and armed) by British, French, American, Italian Prime Ministers and Presidents just a couple of years ago and then suddenly demonised as a ‘brutal dictator’ and his country and citizens bombed back to the stone age – all of that pisses us off. But what really concerns us here is not our own rising blood pressure, but the future of Libya. Already the vultures are circling, eying their prize in the form of Libya’s natural resources. Take it away, French Minister of Defence, Gérard Longuet:

New Libyan leaders ‘owe’ France

Agence France-Presse

France will seek a leading role in post-war Libya, Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said on Friday, arguing that Libya’s new leaders “owe” Paris for leading the campaign to oust Muammar Gaddafi.

Speaking in an interview to Le Monde on the day after Libya’s ousted strongman was captured and killed, Longuet said France is poised to take advantage of its leading role after a successful campaign.

France “will strive to play the role of a principal partner in the country where the leaders know they owe us a lot“.

“Everyone will throw their hat into the ring. We will neither be the last nor the most blatant,” he said of Libya’s relations with various Western countries in the coalition.[…]

Libya, which produced 1.6 to 1.7 million barrels of oil daily before the conflict, is a coveted market for many countries that are also eyeing potentially massive contracts for rebuilding its infrastructure.

Ah yes, ‘reconstruction’, Libyans can kiss goodbye to the relatively decent standard of living they enjoyed under Gaddafi. Just look at post-invasion Iraq; ‘reconstruction’ there has left the country impoverished and in ruins, looted by the war-mongers.

I’m a ‘Brutal Dictator’, Get Me Out of Here

The bottom line here is that people like Gaddafi do not remain leader of a major nation for 40+ years without having self-preservation high on their list of priorities. The idea that Gaddafi would have waited until he was dragged from a sewer by a gang of bloodthirsty hoodlums and then beaten and shot dead is stretching his reputation as a true ‘man of the people’ a little far. Gaddafi’s decades of experience gleaned from dealing with and observing the treachery of ‘Western diplomacy’, both up close in person and from afar, would have left him in no doubt as to what lay in store for him if US-imposed regime change ever came to Libya. He would also have been egotistical enough to realise that he would be of better service to his beloved Libya alive than dead.

We cannot then, at this stage, rule out the possibility that, like Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi left Libya long before he was forced to resort to martyrdom in a sewer with only his ‘golden gun’ between him and a baying mob of paid CIA killers. As with the case of Saddam, there is evidence that this is what happened. As Joe Quinn noted at the time, the death of Saddam Hussein was more than likely faked. See his article on the Capture, Trial and Conviction of Saddam Hussein for evidence that Saddam too was spirited out of the country long before someone that looked like him was pulled from a ‘rat-hole’. Consider also the very convenient way in which the alleged body of Gaddafi has now been secretly buried in an unmarked grave in the desert. Much like the alleged dumping of the body of Osama bin Laden ‘at sea’, this little maneuver stinks of a cover-up.

In attempting to uncover and expose government and media lies, it is often helpful to consult media reports that were released early on in any major news event. In a 21 February report, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, was quoted as having said that Gaddafi had already left the country.

Then in August Ynet News reported that:

“A convoy of six armored vehicles has crossed the Libyan border to Algeria on Saturday night, the Egyptian news agency reported. While it is unclear who was riding in the cars, a rebel forces source estimated that the convoy transported senior Libyan officials – including the embattled leader, Muammar Gaddafi.”

The report quoted a Libyan military council source as saying that troops loyal to Gaddafi’s regime accompanied the convoy to the border.

In a 24 August IOL News story we were told:

“Burkina Faso, a former recipient of large amounts of Libyan aid, has offered Muammar Gaddafi exile but has also recognised the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) as Libya’s government. “

On 1 September, Reuters reported that:

“Muammar Gaddafi called Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to negotiate a passage into his country but the latter refused to take his call.”

And then on 11 October, the Bulawayo News reported that:

“An official on Libya’s governing council says he believes Muammar Gaddafi is hiding in the south-western desert near the borders with Niger and Algeria.”

We submit that the publishing of grisly (and grainy) photos and video of the alleged death of Gaddafi is not for the benefit of the global public at all (even though many seem to have relished the lynching). Rather, it is for the benefit of the leaders of any other nations who might be thinking about disobeying the dictates of the US Empire and the World bank. British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg seemed to confirm Joe’s earlier thoughts about this when he declared on 22 October that:

“The death of Muammar Gaddafi sends a huge signal to others in the region that the sins of grotesque dictators eventually catch up with them.”

In making this statement, Clegg has departed from the British government’s original rationale for an attack on Libya – humanitarian intervention – and has made clear the real reason for the eight month-long bombing of Libya, its people, and their freedoms – naked, bloody imperialism, launched – quite coincidentally – on 19 March, the same date as the invasion of Iraq eight years ago.

Assuming for a moment that that really was Gaddafi they murdered in broad daylight, then the unctuous words of British foreign secretary William Hague…

“We would have preferred him to be able to face justice at the International Criminal Court or in a Libyan court for his crimes. We don’t approve of extra-judicial killings. “

…are such fantastical bullshit that we reckon Hague deserves a prize. If Gaddafi was in fact executed on October 20th, then Hague and his ilk in the US and France are undoubtedly delighted. Gaddafi in the dock at The Hague was the very last thing any members of the US, British or French criminal enterprises (aka governments) would have wanted to see, mainly because of the large quantities of beans he would have spilled. They didn’t want a rerun of Slobodan Milosevic’s truth-letting tainting their blood-spattered image as liberators, an embarrassing judicial episode which thankfully, for NATO governments, came to an abrupt end with the termination of the former Serb leader in his jail cell.

As we ponder the dark implications of living in a world where large numbers of people rejoice at gruesome stage shows of death and merrily embrace the murder of decent men, we’ll leave you with the final, disgusting words of the clearly psychopathic Hillary Clinton:

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