About Me

I am a member of a new Socialist group in Ireland, the United Left Alliance, it has been formed by Socialists that have fought for decades against the capitalist system we are force fed via the capitalist media. This election has been a very important breakthrough not just for the people of Ireland but also Europe. Our country has fallen victim to the vultures that are the IMF & ECB who have begun the end game of the capitalist system, the cheap credit flowed around the globe for the past 20 years has now been reigned in & the unbridled & frenzied speculation over that time which drove prices skywards artificially now leaves the gaping hole in public finances & the people with the banks billions in bad debt. The end game i mentioned is now afoot, with the Private money lenders of last resort valiantly stepping in to 'bailout' our country from it woes (repay the banks private debts by passing it with interest to sovereign debt)Electricity, Gas, Wood & Water are all in the sights of our rescuers facilitated by our very own indigenous fascist’s in the Fine Gael party. George Orwell said, "In times of Universal deceit, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act"

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Libya and Nigeria after Gaddafi

The article below would in my opinion be free from the propaganda machines of the WEST (America, britain etc) & EAST (Saudi, Quatar etc), the response from many of the african nations, i would offer, is closer to a reality check from the region, any media report is subject to the author, editor, & media outlet's bias, some are more bias than others, but some hit some home truths that are devoid in the reporting of the clearly massive bias of the WEST & EAST, this article, while it does seem to regurgitate some soundbites has hit the very point that is the aim of NATO from the start,


The fragmenting of the various factions in libya so the country becomes easy picking for them to take sides, the most accurate point aired in the article is this,


With only a provisional Executive Council led by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, it will be interesting to see how the country will be brought under control and the transition to democracy initiated. If it works, it will be a major and uncommon sociological miracle of our time.


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By Ochereome Nnanna


LIBYA does not have a common boundary with Nigeria. But it has boundaries with countries like Niger Republic and Chad, which in turn, have boundaries with Mali , Burkina Faso , Northern Sudan and Nigeria, all of which are weak states that have little or no control of their international boundaries.
According to the Director General of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON, Dr.Joseph Odumodu, Nigeria has over 1,000 border entry points out of which only 25 are manned! So, when I talk about Libya and Nigeria after Muamar Gaddafi, you will see where I am coming from
The fall of Gaddafi on Thursday October 20, 2011 may be the beginning of brand new nightmares for people of both countries. Years down the line, we may all rue the day we rushed to the side of the West in our support for the forceful ouster of the tyrant by pro-democracy forces.


We may regret not thinking through the problem in the overall interest of the Libyan and Nigerian people. I hope this will not happen, but the auguries do not seem to support the unbridled sense of euphoria sweeping Libya and even Nigeria at the fall of a man who dominated his country – and to some extent, the continent – for 42 years


Let’s start with Libya. We cannot deny that Gaddafi was a brutal dictator and megalomaniac. It is not easy to build a regime in modern times that lasts 40 years under one man. We cannot deny his frequent rants against the West and even his involvement in sponsorship of terrorism, even though he quickly back-tracked just when the US and allies contemplated an invasion in the manner that Saddam Hussein of Iraq was dealt with. Also undeniable was the fact that he looted his country’s treasury and was estimated to be worth about US$150 billion. These were on the reverse side of the regime


Post-colonial monarchy


The obverse side was that he overthrew a post-colonial monarchy of King Idris and established his Arab socialist Jamahiriya that gave the people economic and social fulfilment but denied them the right to democratic change of governance. Under Gaddafi, Libya was one of the most effectively governed countries in the world. It was a rare example of how the oil money was deployed for the benefit of the people. Libyans lived like princes and princesses. Menial workers from sub-Saharan Africa (including Nigeria ) braved the hellish conditions of the Sahara Desert to work there under situations of virtual voluntary (but lucrative) slavery
The social conditions that obtained in Gaddafi’s Libya were such that Libyan citizens who engaged in lives of crime deserved, under the Islamic Sharia Law, to be given the severe punishments attached. The educational level among Libyans (83 percent, spread evenly among the genders and social classes) was among the highest in Africa and the Arab world. Incidentally, it was this high literacy rate that aided the pro-democracy revolution that took off in Tunisia, spread to Egypt and was copied by Libyans now yearning for democracy


The sudden onset of the Arab Spring at the end of 2010 caught everyone unawares. Certainly, Gaddafi was psychologically unprepared and unwilling to adjust to the demand for democratic change. He was not like that great Ghanaian leader, Flt Lt Jerry Rawlings, who staged two revolutions, cleaned his country free of political and economic vermin, conducted a decade of dictatorship and personally ushered Ghana into a genuine democratic dispensation that has survived for two decades and growing stronger. Gaddafi only saw “dogs” that he benefitted with his rule. He refused to adjust or even run away to safety when he had the Republic of South Africa , Venezuela and other countries begging him to come for asylum. He held on till he was killed, his family ruined, his town and tribe dismantled and everything lost


Now that Gaddafi is gone the hard part of the challenge stares everybody in the face. The Libyan National Transitional Council, NTC, is a coalition of strange bedfellows united by the urge to oust Gaddafi. Now that the mission has been accomplished, we wait to see what other factors still unite them. This is the usual point where former comrade-at-arms begin bloody rivalries


In Libya’s case, there are ethnic, religious, ideological and oil-related reasons for factional fights for control. There are guns everywhere and in every hand. In terms of control, Libya today is comparable only to Somalia. It is usually in this state of flux that Al Qaeda and related Islamist organisations come fishing


The road ahead of Libya is, indeed, rough, long and winding. For a country and an Arab culture that is used to only dictatorship, the yearning for democracy may be a mere chimera, as feasible as the mirages that are usually commonplace in desert climes. Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia where the military establishments survived the fall of the regimes and have since taken charge of the transition to democracy, the Libyan military under Gaddafi was defeated by the citizen revolutionary fighters. This is the most complete revolution ever witnessed in the Arab Spring


With only a provisional Executive Council led by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, it will be interesting to see how the country will be brought under control and the transition to democracy initiated. If it works, it will be a major and uncommon sociological miracle of our time


But if it is mismanaged, the reverberations will transcend Libya. The country might disintegrate, as tribes and factions might engage in wars of supremacy and control over the nation’s oil resources. When such conflicts explode, the West will take sides, and so will Islamists and Libya might turn into another Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia for years to come. If this happens, both Libyans and Nigerians and countries within reach might look back with nostalgia at the period that Gaddafi was able to run his country peacefully and prosperously. Today’s jubilant victors may never live to see the peaceful, prosperous and democratic Libya they fought for.


For us in Nigeria , the North might become an even hotter bed than Boko Haram has turned it into. With a lot of displaced gunmen and former Gaddafi fighters, many of whom belong to nomadic cultures now roaming the open Sahel, the territorial integrity of our country may take a bad hit. We now have no choice but to press ahead with President Jonathan’s new idea for a national identity card system. We may also have no alternative than to be more serious with manning our borders, especially our Northern borders


When there was a serious drought in the Sahel and Sahara Desert countries in the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of strange-looking, like-skinned refugees thronged towns and cities of Nigeria, living exclusively as beggars and refusing to do any work. If the Libyan civil war and subsequent possible instability triggers another wave of migrations, it may bring a large number of armed and war-hardened refugees


We can only guess at the consequences for our fragile polity

The Red, White and Blue Imperialist War against Libya

The Imperialist attack that murdered thousands of Libyan civilians and smashed swathes of state infrastructure has nothing to do with what happened in Egypt, Tunisia or anywhere else in the Arab world. If you really want to know what went on, begin with Venezuela in April 2002. That failed coup started with a mass media campaign orchestrated by the privately owned Venevision TV and Radio company, which claimed that Chavez supporters had murdered up to 60 trade union demonstrators. It also claimed that Chavez had resigned and was on his way out of the country. This was reported throughout Venezuela and the world. Next up we had the new president Pedro Carmosa sworn in, who promptly dissolved the democratically elected National Assembly and declared the 1999 constitution null and void. As demonstrations erupted organically the police were unleashed, this was not televised but reported as, ‘Chavez hardliners attempting to usurp the will of the people’. This attempted coup had been planned nine months in advance initiated by big business and their acolytes’, the national media, some trade unionists, police chiefs, generals and other henchmen, directed from the good old God fearing US of A.

It is almost 2 years since Libya began trading with Venezuela as it had with Cuba some years earlier, now we begin to see a different equation, one where an alternative social alliance was being assembled outside the USA's sphere of influence. Factor in Gaddafi’s economic diplomacy throughout Africa and Arabia over the last 15 years where he was trying desperately to put in place a gold standard Dinar; which if established would have had serious ramifications for the Dollar and the US economy. Once you understand that oil is bought with dollars you begin to see what has happened to Libya. The US have been preparing for a long time to eradicate the Gaddafi regime by imposing their carefully selected ‘National Transitional Council’ (NTC) by military aggression. This time they were not going to leave their well laid plans in the hands of locals least they too botched-it-up like Carmosa’s Contras. This time they disguised their support beneath NATO banners claiming they were coming to the aid of friendly rebels who have requested their assistance; overstepping seriously their NATO mandate. The old imperialist powers, the UK and France, seemingly playing an equal part with the US in effecting regime change through targeted bombing, supported by special ground forces who helped direct the ‘friendly rebel forces’ in the overthrow of the Gaddafi led Jamarhiriya.

Let’s not forget that Libya was, 6 months ago, the leading African country in terms of human development index (HDI), it also had the highest life expectancy on the continent. Furthermore, it had the highest per capita spend on education and health while also providing less well-off neighbours with funding and technical expertise as part of its outreach humanitarian programme. Libya consists of over 2000 tribes; who send elected representatives to the Council of Tribes (Jamarhiriya) where they debate education, health, cultural and social programmes and also influence the direction of their government’s foreign policy. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia the people do not lack food or social provision, in fact Libyans have one of the best universal health care systems in the world and have a standard of education comparable with France. This is reflected in their HDI standing of 0.755 making them by far the most desirable country in Africa to live in, 50 places higher than Egypt.

Libya holds gold reserves of 148 tonnes worth in excess of $1,000 per person as opposed to $50.00 per person in Ireland and $160.00pp in the UK. Libya also has Billions of dollars invested throughout the world in different countries which have been frozen for the last 6 months. $1.5 billion of this money was frozen in South Africa which the US has decided to take. France has already helped itself to $125 million of Libyan money. Wars like this cost these predators nothing because they ‘sequestrate’ their adversary’s investments and when they’re finished bombing, blasting and leveling the nation’s infrastructure they can look forward to enormous rewards. Their lackeys (NTC) will award multi-billion dollar contracts to those who helped install them, this is how they plunder the wealth from their defeated host.
This is international terrorism of the highest caliber designed to smash sovereign nations that can see-through the immoral imperative of the Red, White and Blue Troika who go about the world bombing, bullying and browbeating those who are not prepared to crawl. Gaddafi we have been told is a mad dog who should have been put down years ago, maybe he was made mad after 8 well documented assassination attempts on his life with at least a similar number of unsubstantiated ones. This policy of targeted assassinations sidesteps any semblance of law, national or international. The US, the UK, France and Israel have become the greatest purveyors of this perversion. Who’s Next in their line of fire, Chavez or (Raul) Castro? Once they have these other little nations crushed beneath the weight of their smart ordinance either directly or indirectly; then they will start paying a lot more attention to the internal opposition in their countries. Their master plan is simple, once they own and control everything, their rule will be tyrannical, then they can do anything they please; there will be no opposition.
To paraphrase ‘the Great US Indian fighter’, General William T Sherman, ‘the only good opponent is a dead opponent’

Martin Niemuller poignantly captured how he ended up in a concentration camp when released from Sachsenhausen in 1945

First they came for the communists: I was not a communist, so I did not speak-out

Then they came for the Trade Unionists: I was not a trade unionist, again I stayed quiet

Next they came for the Jews: I was not a Jew, I looked the other way

Today; today they came for me.
Written by,

Ray FitzPatrick