The Setback: The Cost of Ousting Qaddafi...

The Setback: The Cost of Ousting Qaddafi...

With the capture and subsequent death of Muammar Qadaffi, the elites whom control and manipulate the money supply have dodged a barrage of bullets. Much has been said of Qadaffi's iron clad run regime and how he was a brutal oppressor of his people, yet nothing has been said of the advancements the Libyan people have made since his rise to power in 1969 with a bloodless coup might I add. According to Abdulrazaq Oyebanji Hamzat, the Int’l Human Rights Commission, Ambassador for Nigeria, the government of Muammar Qaddafi took the Libyan people out of poverty and debt, to prosperity and debt-free status in 41 years. Before Qaddafi, literacy in Libya was only 10%. Since Qaddafi’s leadership, literacy has risen to 90%. Malnutrition in Libya is 2%—a figure lower than the United States of America. Education from grade school through to college is free in Libya. Healthcare is free and Libyan pharmacies and hospitals are comparable to high-quality European facilities. Libya ranks No. 53 on the United Nations Index of Human Development. Libya has the highest standard of living in Africa. In 1969 before Qaddafi it was the lowest in the world at just $60 per year income Libya gives free land and seeds to anyone who wants to farm that land. There is virtually no homelessness in Libya as everyone is given a home. Women in Libya have equal rights, not only as a philosophy, but in practice. Under Qaddafi’s oil-revenue-sharing program, each Libyan gets $500 deposited into his or her bank account each month. For any medical care, operations, or health treatments that are unavailable in Libya, the citizen is given full expenses for travel, treatment and accommodation abroad to wherever is required for the treatment to be given. No other country in the world does this. When a couple marry they are gifted $60,000 to do with as they please; furnish their home, take a holiday, honeymoon, buy a car, etc. Libyans have a direct participatory democracy based on People’s Conferences that puts other so-called “democracies” to shame. Prior to its Qaddafi revolutionary makeover, Libya was a large US military base, used for bombing trainings, home to the largest US military base in North Africa. Overthrowing Colonel Qaddafi is a serious blow to all anti-imperialists, in the Third World in particular. Qaddafi was a staunch Arab socialist who unconditionally supported the liberation struggles of the Palestinians, South-Africans and Zimbabweans to name but a few. Also remember that he spent Libya's oil wealth on social programmes resulting in the country becoming one of the most developed nations in the developing world. One of the greatest achievements of the 1969 revolution that brought his pan-Arab socialist movement to power was not just universal and free healthcare and education but real independence for the first time in the north African state's history. Libya was also the victim of US imperialist aggression in April 1986 when US planes bombed Tripoli and Benghazi, killing the colonel's adopted baby daughter Hana and injuring countless others. Let us not also forget that Qaddafi was a leading proponent of pan-African unity, both economically and politically, and his loss will result in nakedness, sickness and degradation of living standards for the Libyan peoples at the request of the US, European Union and International Monetary Fund. Venezuaelan president Hugo Chavez had this to say, 

"Now president Obama said he will collaborate economically with the 'new government', which of course we do not recognize. Economic collaboration means stealing Libya's abundant wealth that had been shared around Africa without any debt nor borrowing from banks, giving Libya the highest standard of living in Africa. Libyan citizens enjoyed perks which are the dream of those in the west: free unlimited health and dental care, free unlimited funding for education anywhere in the world, rent-free house, $60,000 to couples upon getting married. This was carried out in line with the "Third Universal Theory" as explained in The Green Book which Colonel Muammar Qaddafi authored after leaving government in 1979. According to this formula, all natural resources belong to everyone, so the oil and other assets of Libya, revenue is totalled each year, and then after expenditure on all required free education, health, married couples start-up boost, free electricity supply to each home, the remaining money is then divided by the entire population and deposited into their personal bank accounts -- currently around $500 free money each month, whilst they also may additionally earn from any work they do without this being affected. After Libya's assets abroad at the outset of the war on Libya earlier this year, including $32 billions ear-marked for the creation of an African Monetary Fund, African Central Bank, and African Investment Bank, which would have spelt the end of World Bank and International Monetary Fund control of the African continent, this September, Venezuela has set the way forward for other nations to withdraw funds from western banks as well as the gold reserves."

A key component to the oust and murder of Colonel Qadaffi was the fact the he was bringing all African nations together through a monetary system that would have definitely rivaled if not overtaken that of the west. His plan was to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and allow African nations to share the wealth. Ironically, Saddam Hussein was trying to do the same thing by trading oil for Euro's only just prior to U.S. invasion. The plan was to sell oil to exporting countries only for gold, which the US and most other western countries undoubtedly would not have been able to afford. This would have no doubt shifted the economic balance of the world and empowered Africa. The Libyan peoples who have risen up against the colonel may, in another 10 or 20 years, realise what they have lost, just as the citizens of the former Soviet Union and eastern European socialist democracies now do.