2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary's policies turned Libya into a terrorist hell hole [View all]polly7
(20,582 posts)He was the only one who helped Mandela, branded by the west as a 'terrorist' during Apartheid. He could be brutal to those who opposed him - perhaps he knew what would be in store for the region had he failed in what he was trying to do - which was everything the west didn't want - a prosperous, independent Libya controlling its own resources and keeping Africom out. I don't believe much from western media anymore, sorry, Cheese Sandwich - as much as I do respect you. I saw the videos of the hundreds of thousands of Libyans gathered to support him while the west was ramping up the protest into a bloody mess - many crying and holding up his pictures. No, he was no saint to be sure, but certainly not the devil to his people the MSM and many here are trying to make him out to be.
Mandela praised Qaddafi for fully supporting ending apherteid.
This question becomes even more valid in light of what the mainstream media, in the wake of the former South African presidents death, have been anxiously hiding from the public: the actual close and crucial alliance between Mandela and Gaddafi. Back in the 70s and 80s, when the West refused to allow sanctions against Apartheid in South Africa and used to call Mandela a terrorist, it was none other than Libyas Muammar Gaddafi who kept supporting him. Gaddafi funded Mandelas fight against Apartheid by training ANC fighters and by paying for their education abroad, and their bond only became stronger after Mandelas release from prison on February 11, 1990.
When Mandela was taken to the ruins of Gaddafis compound in Tripoli, which was bombed by the Reagan administration in 1986 in an attempt to murder the entire Gaddafi family, he said:
No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. 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.
In response, Gaddafi thanked Mandela for his friendship, saying: Who would ever have said that one day the opportunity for us to meet would become reality. We would like you to know that we are constantly celebrating your fight and that of the South African people, and that we salute your courage during all of those long years you spent in detention in the prison of Apartheid. Not a single day has passed without us having thought of you and your sufferings.
Eight years later, when then U.S. president Bill Clinton visited Mandela in March 1998, Clinton criticized the South African presidents meeting with Muammar Gaddafi. In reaction to that criticism, Mandela straightforwardly replied:
I have also invited Brother Leader Gaddafi to this country. And I do that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country. Not only did the Libyans support us in return, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle, and to win. And those South Africans who have berated me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go and jump into a pool.
On the eve of the NATO-led war against Libya, Gaddafis booming country largely co-funded three projects that would rid Africa from its financial dependence on the West once and for all: the African Investment Bank in the Libyan city of Sirte, the African Monetary Fund (AFM), to be based in the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde, in 2011, and the African Central Bank to be based in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. Especially the latter angered France not coincidentally also the main orchestrator of the war on Libya because it would mean the end of the West African CFA franc and the Central African CFA franc, through which France kept a hold on as much as thirteen African countries. Only two months after Africa said no to Western attempts to join the AFM, Western organized protests against the AFMs benefactor, Muammar Gaddafi, started to erupt in Libya
ultimately resulting in the freezing of $30 billion by the West, which money mostly was intended for the above mentioned financial projects.
But Gaddafi helped the African continent in more than just material ways. More than any other African leader, he supported Mandelas ANCs struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. Above that, many Black Africans, especially sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, found a new home in Gaddafis prosperous Libya.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37301.htm
Gaddafi was praised for his human rights record towards women. He introduced equal pay, women were half the work force.
Prior to western military involvement Libya was a modern and secular state with the highest regional womens rights and standards of living. No more.
Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.
Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafis Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of womens rights. More than half of Libyas university students were women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.
Now, the new 'democratic' Libyan regime is clamping down on womens rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Extremist Islamic forces see gender equality as a Western perversion. Many women live in fear.