All eyes watch the unveiling, not necessarily the unraveling, of West-Qaddafi-West complicity in long-developing, cross-continental disasters
Editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett
Muammar al- Qaddafi (also spelled Muammar Khadafy, Moammar Gadhafi, or Mu’ammar Al-qadhdhāfī, b. 1942, near Surt, Libya), leader of Libya from 1970, a controversial Arab statesman, born in a tent in the Libyan desert, the son of an itinerant Bedouin farmer, 1963 graduate of the University of Libya, 1965 graduate of Libyan military academy, a Muslim and Arab nationalist. As a military captain in 1969, Qaddafi seized control of the government in a military coup that deposed King Idrīs; and “was named commander in chief of the armed forces and chairman of Libya’s new governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council.”
“The United States and other Western nations, including Britain, have very significant business ties to Libya,” led Free Speech Radio News headlines on Friday.
“When diplomatic relations with Libya resumed in 2004, U.S. companies were among those who rushed to stake their claim. Several companies lobbied to ensure their access to Libya’s considerable oil reserves.”
“There was something unusually intimate — craven, even — about the political and business relationship between London and Libya,” Peter Popham wrote in last Wednesday’s Independent (UK). Quoting London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges, he writes, “‘you cannot exaggerate the role played by Blair and Britain in bringing Qaddafi in from the cold.… In 2004, Qaddafi was still a maverick — someone dismissed as an insane, babbling idiot by most serious people. … [And] by allowing Qaddafi to rebrand himself, [former UK Prime Minister Tony] Blair sacrificed principle at the altar of economic gain. The rest of British business duly followed.’”
Since leaving office, the prime minister, now running an advisory business called Tony Blair Associates, “has travelled to Tripoli on business for JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. bank — and met Col. Qaddafi as recently as last summer.”
40 years’ brutality for oil
“Long-term watchers of Colonel Qaddafi remember the way he toyed with sub-Saharan Africa, championing the notion of Africa United — while his own citizens treated the [other] Africans on their doorstep worse than dirt.” Popham wrote.
“They will remember how he winked at the mass trafficking of migrants from his coast to Italy, to put pressure on Silvio Berlusconi's government to sign a generous deal of wartime reparations – and once it was signed he threw the would-be migrants into his vile jails, to the satisfaction of xenophobic Italians.
“They will remember how he allowed absurd charges to be leveled against a group of Bulgarian nurses in the country and kept the case going for years until he had extracted a sufficiently huge European bribe to let them go. He has behaved, in other words, exactly like a mafia boss.…
“[Yet] Trade between Italy and Libya today is eight times that between Tripoli and the UK. …” French president Nicolas Sarkozy “has received Col. Qaddafi in his capital city, where the Bedouin tent was set up within sight of the Elysée palace. The United States, Brazil and Germany have all rushed to do business with [the Qaddafi] regime.”
Britain’s [Blair’s] foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2004 quoted last week in the Financial Times —
“Libya has oil and so do other countries whose regimes we would not voluntarily choose… The world needs energy and the simple truth is that if we had been more fastidious in our approach, then other countries — notably China — would have moved in to take our place.”
Sir Vincent Fean, UK ambassador to Libya quoted last week in the Financial Times —
“We need to work with what we have in Libya … you shouldn’t be frightened by the name Qaddafi … It goes with the territory.”
This mea culpa, “we-have-no-choice” fatalistic fakery, this disingenuousness, is believable but only if we also believe there are no other, indeed greater minds in the world.
Minds fresh with constructive ideas there are among us bursting with industry and innovation, resourcefulness and alternatives beyond the oppressive status quo crafted and contained by mass propagandists and makers and traders of lethal weapons. The idea of having no choice falls on its face, but only if the rest of us — owning no propaganda machines or weapons of mass destruction — stop being lazy, hiding in our hovels huddled up to our screens, stop being scared of our shadows.
Sources and notes
Qaddafi, Muammar al-. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica
“Libyan revolution at odds with U.S. business interests,” February 25, 2011, http://fsrn.org/audio/libyan-revolution-odds-with-us-business-interests/8094
Independent.co.uk
Libya is peering into a vacuum of Qaddafi 's making (Peter Popham), February 23, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/peter-popham/peter-popham-libya-is-peering-into-a-vacuum-of-Qaddafi s-making-2222906.html
“Libya: No line in the sand” (James Blitz and Lina Saigol), February 25 2011,
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