NATO were wrong to bomb Libya and kill so many, but that does not make Gadaffi a good guy. He was not – he was cruel, avaricious, and a dictator and really was mentally unbalanced – I speak as someone who met him.
What I now hope for is that civil war ends in Libya and in short order there are genuinely free and fair elections, in which all who wish may participate, to elect the government the Libyan people want. I hope that NATO country interference in Libya now ends and that no commitments are made over Libya’s mineral resources until an elected government is in place to make them.
But I fear that future NATO power interference, starting with the elections, will be less obvious than the mass killings, but in the end even more damaging, and that Libya’s resources and its finance will be handed over to the big corporations lock, stock and barrel. Those who trumpet this as a triumph of “Liberal intervention” are going to have to show a great deal of progress very quickly, if they claim it outweighs the many civilians NATO killed in Sirte and elsewhere – if you believe such a stark utilitarian equation of dead children for democracy can ever have validity.
@Tris,
“Scots, canspeccy, the adjective is Scots, not scotch.”
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Here comes the protection squad.
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Anyhow, fuck off Tris. I speak English not Scotch.
Well, now, isnt this interesting?
http://www.caat.org.uk/press/archive.php?url=20110217prs
Roll up, roll up, get yer public suppression devices while yer still in charge!
Used to be a standing joke with a mate of mine.
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“My old man is 50% scotch.”
“You mean Scottish.”
“No, I mean scotch. He’s 100% Scottish.”
Whats up with Conspeccy, anyhoo? And whats with the single asterisk between each line? In case anyone hasn’t figure it out, scotch is a drink, and scots are people of scottish extraction (or can be taken as referring to the Scots dialect AKA the Doric or Lallans). This has been a public service posting. Ay-thang you!
Glenn, Fiddich?
Re Pilger:
The tragedy of the The War Against Terror, is that the energy monopoly sought by the US will not be worth the candle. With the quadrupling in oil price since 2000, new investments in exploration and technology have revealed a virtually limitless supply of hydrocarbons in virtually every part of the world. They’re fracking for gas in Cheshire, there’s a glut of natural gas in North America, and China’s looking to develop its own shale gas resource.
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But the biggest technological advances will be in energy efficiency. It takes one and a half to two kwh of electricity to make a litre of petrol. But it requires less than one and a half to two kwh of electricity to drive a light electric car as far as a BMW travels on a litre of petrol. And the Chinese have already built several hundred million electric bikes that can go just about all the way round the world on a kwh, and they are investing hugely in electric cars.
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Then there’s solar power which will be competitive with oil sooner than later.
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So when the war’s over, trillions will have been wasted, millions or perhaps billions of lives will have been disrupted or destroyed, free society will have long ceased to exist, the idea of a free society will have been expunged from the history books, and the fascist West will control a lot of useless oil fields and unnecessary pipelines.
A.I.L. for OIL.Who next? The Ministry of Death must be delighted. How disgusting to live in a country run by such ethnocentric genocidal psychopaths such as the Bliar ,Brown and now Cameron ,Hague etc. While Lordy Lordy Judge has just announced the U.K. is to be freed from the oppresive tyranny of the European Human Rights Act!Watch your backs everyone we are almost into total fascist rule.
John Goss has touched on the right area, I think. While building bases in Central Asia and Afghanistan, and demonising Iran for all they were worth, the US must have had an eye on the possibility of China physically moving west to secure oil resources (which are scarce in China). What they overlooked for some time was the commercial and political initiative China has undertaken in Africa, which also has rare mineral resources essential for consumer and industrial electronics manufacture. Sooooo….
@canspeccy
Try swanning into a Glesgae pub wi’ that mooth on you and see what happens. Scotch indeed. Ignorant bassa.
We all must use caution in accepting the Death of Gaddai as a fact
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I for one won’t believe it until they chuck the body in the sea.
“Try swanning into a Glesgae pub wi’ that mooth on you”
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Try talking like Robbie Burns in a pub in some English-speaking country and see what they make of it!
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But, yes, I know the Scotch are a violent racist lot: afflicted by “such a narrow nationalism” as John Buchan described it: he being one of those brighter Scotch lads who saw the only fine prospect in Scotland was the broad high road to London.
The Daily Mail have the video of the execution on their website. Very gruesome. Many comments on Media Lens too about this summary execution and how the corporate media are putting out the EmPyre’s message.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051361/Gaddafi-dead-Picture-Libya-dictator-captured-killed-Sirte.html
@canspeccy
You’ve nae idea how violent the Scots can be, chum.
Shut yer hole, or it’ll be the double-malky for you.
Let’s see what happens next in Libya. Will the Libyan people now gain peace and freedom and maintain control over their resources? I hope so. I fear, however, that NATO will steal their resources and that Libya will be turned by ‘mad mullahs with guns’ into ‘Afghanistan on the Med’. I fear there may well now be mass blood-letting of all secular politicians/generals. An Al Qaeda state on Europe’s window-ledge? I hope not. I sincerely hope that my fears are unfounded that it will all work out for the best in the end. We shall see, we shall see.
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There’s no actual execution (snuff) video (yet), Mary, just the same pictures/video that’s all over the web.
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In the end, over the months having been every opportunity to leave into exile, etc., Gaddafi chose to stay and die. And so, like Saddam Hussein, he ends in a hole in the ground, in his case, in a sewage pipe. And then, it has been reported (I don’t know Arabic, so cannot tel what he might have been saying in the juddering mobile ‘phone footage) he begs for his life. So, an unheroic, dog’s death for the man who wanted to die a hero.
“Dictator begs for his life after being dragged from a drain”
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Shot before a baying mob. Aren’t our friends cool.
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Personal disclosure: I own shares in BP.
“Let’s see what happens next in Libya.”
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Oh, yeah. You’ll see. It’ll all be for the best. And Gadhafi was a cruel, avaricious, dictator, personally certified as insane by CM.
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No, he’s much better dead and Libya in ruins, we just have to hope those greedy oil cos. don’t steel the oil that Libyans have been living on so well under the mad, cruel, avaricious, dragged-out-of a sewer Gadhafi.
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Yes, the coward was actually hiding in a sewer. Think of that when you cash you next dividend cheque from BP.
If this is the future…….the use of hi-tech force that no government (of a small country) can resist…..then that future should be terrifying for us all.
Whatever criticisms can be made of Gaddafi, he was the best leader Africa has seen and his demise has everything to do with:
1) His resistance to the will of international finance (as represented by owned western political leaders),
2) His embracing of the Chinese and
3) His moves to establish a single African currency………
………..and much less to do with the actions of the ‘Libyan rebels’ (i.e. Al Qaeda).
These people would have been swiftly dealt with were it not for NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ carpet bombing, from which Libyan nationalist forces could only retreat.
An estimated 50,000 Libyan dead and not a single British serviceman. What progress!
Doesn’t it make just you proud to be British.
It would be interesting to know if the RAF are hugging themselves with glee over this.
“British Prime Minister David Cameron reacted to the news of Colonel Gaddafi’s death by saying it held out the promise of a better future for the people he ruled for four decades.”
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051361/Gaddafi-dead-Dictator-begged-life-summarily-executed.html#ixzz1bM351IOY
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Erm, wouldn’t millions of peoples lives have more promise of a better future if the same fate befell Cameron?
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I think they would you know.
The last part of the latest Alex Jones Show had an expert on who doubts the Colonels demise.
Surfing around, the following seems to be the US Right’s consensus:
1. We can no longer hope to implement the Project for a New American century on our own.
2. We must, using NATO, drag the Europeans into our scheme.
Libya looks like the testing ground for the required strategic and hardware interoperability. No doubt Cameron and Sarkozy will be making merry tonight.
Writeon,
‘We seem to have a strategy for “democracy” that involves smashing countries to pieces and creating chaos and a weak centre; as in Afghanistan and Iraq.’ ‘Dead children’ for so called democracy.
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It is indeed a dark day – I have been targeted in a sinister way because I refuse to be anonymous.
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‘I feel the era of liberal democracy is over, replaced by a vile neo-conservative agenda and strategy to re-establish western imperial control over the world.’
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If they can’t be prepared to allow an old Navy veteran to live his life and conjure hope for war children since 2004 then I want you all to know the reality of their agenda to those who dare to stand strong for reason, peace and truth.
The clincher for me about Gaddafi was seeing the footage on the Guardian website featuring a guy from HRW talking about how Gaddafi had a group of dissidents ‘tried’ and then hung in front of a hall full of schoolchildren. The executioner was a young woman in green who encouraged the kids to bay at the dissidents, who were clearly scared out of their minds. She later became a minister in Gaddafi’s government. If that’s how he dealt with dissent, he deserved whatever happened to him. So don’t anyone tell me that he was “the best leader Africa has seen” or that we should view such events in the context of the Arab world; it is profoundly patronising to the Arab peoples to make out that they are primitives that need ‘strong’ (i.e., dictatorial) leaders and are incapable of creating a workable version of democracy within a broadly Islamic framework.
I thought the ritual slaughter of Saddam Hussein was ghastly, but the killing of Gaddafi beats that dark act hands down. It’s truly deplorable and shameful, and the reaction of our political leaders is sickening. If this is democracy… then you can have it.
The truth is we live under a form of dictatorship as well, only it’s so entrenched it seems natural to us. We live in a one-party state, with no real opposition worth speaking of. Three conservative factions who squabble over power like a student debating society, signifying very little.
Our leaders aren’t really much better than Gaddafi, only their clothes, rhetoric, and cultural signals appear more normal and sane to us, but underneath they’re the same kind of blood-spattered gangsters, as are virtually all leaders.
The very idea that our gangsters would support a genuine people’s revolution in Libya and democracy… is patently absurd. Our leaders hate and despise democracy and the power of the people to affect their own lives. To them the people are close to sheep or cattle and just as expendable. The people are allowed a vote, but no Power. Power is the unique priviledge of people like Cameron and Osbourne, multi-millionaires who were born to rule, representatives of the traditional ruling elite who are once again emerging from the shadows to claim their birthright.
Gaddafi’s major crime was to topple the traditional elite in Libya and put himself and his followers in power. He also put the western oil companies in their place. Both of these things could never be forgiven, by the west and by the old ruling monarchies in the Middle East who saw Gaddafi as a potential threat and symbol, and alternative to their craven bowing to western interests.
If the shameful truth of the invasion of Libya is ever told, the actions of NATO will be unfavourably compared with Guernica. This will be the first year of my adult life I will not be wearing a poppy, I am so ashamed. What have we become?
I’ve been wondering too how our boys in blue from the RAF are able to look themselves in the mirror these days.
Not exactly the battle of Britain or defending our shores.Libya haven’t had an air force since the very beginning. It has been a turkey shoot !! How many sorties.. 20 , 30 thousand ?? Nobodies counted the civlians they’ve killed but they’ve been bombing highly populated cities and hitting hospitals and schools.
I’ve heard at least 3 versions of Qaddafi’s capture and execution.One was the Saddam cowardly in a hole ending…. shades of the Osama BL raid fiasco….
That’S the big problem the Americans have… they’ve lived with Hollywood so long, a normal ending is never good enough,it has to have a script and edited and reedited until they’ve forgotten themselves what was real… and the Americans allowed the video out because I guess its real. Which does make one wonder again about the OBL death…. mmmmm
Quaddafi was no saint but he wasn’t exactly Stalin either or even Tony Blair for that matter…
MrD,
There is no ‘clincher’ in main stream media propaganda, the ‘clincher’ comes when history reveals the truth.
Writerman
I agree – WebCameron revealed agent Cameron a long ways back!
There were reports earlier of Gaddafi asking the man who killed him: what have i done to you? After hearing such question i wouldn’t be able to kill him even if he was the most cruel despot and bloodsucker.
No, much of the above is conditioned by Western thinking and ignores the reality on the ground. First, Gaddafi stated months ago that he wuld stay to the end. Craig may be able to confirm or deny my impression that he was by and large a man of his (often strange) word; certainly when the realistic options are running out.
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Second, the “rebels”, as we called them earlier in the civil war, were not a well-organised entity subject to military discipline. They were closer to being an armed rabble. Motivated by hatred and righteous resentment. They weren’t about to arrest Gaddafi if a bullet was left in the magazine.
Third, an absolute bastard has been removed for good, without the need for legalities or opportunities for glorious martyrdom. The most practical solution.
I question absolutely whether our intervention actually saved more lives than staying out of it. And I hope the Libyans didn’t do too many deals in order to get our help.
Hold on a minute – eh, we were not allowed to see pictures of a ‘gruesome’ Bin Laden shot in the head – but Gaddafi’s macabre and hideous head-shot adorns plasma screens in millions of evening sitting rooms. Strange world?
“Will the Libyan people now gain peace and freedom and maintain control over their resources? I hope so. I fear, however, that NATO will steal their resources and that Libya will be turned by ‘mad mullahs with guns’ into ‘Afghanistan on the Med’. I fear there may well now be mass blood-letting of all secular politicians/generals. An Al Qaeda state on Europe’s window-ledge? I hope not.” Suhayl Saadi.
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You disagree with these concerns, Alfred…?
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“Oh, yeah. You’ll see. It’ll all be for the best. And Gadhafi was a cruel, avaricious, dictator, personally certified as insane by CM.” Alfred.
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Well, Nextus said that Gaddafi was “schizophrenic” and Craig’s opinion is that he was “mentally unbalanced”. Do you disagree with the august Nextus and the experienced Craig Murray? I cast doubt on the certainty Nextus’s diagnosis, arguing that propaganda machines tend to spin that type of caricature for political reasons and Nextus and I engaged in polite and mature discourse on the matter. So, then, it would seem that you agree with me on this specific matter and disagree with Nextus (and Craig)? How very agreeable.
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Don’t you like British Petroleum, Alfred? Aren’t they British enough for you? After all, like MI6, they claim to be acting in the interests of the British Empire (upon which the sun never set).