Devil On The Cross
Taking with one hand and giving with the other, Pablo-Escobar-style.
The residents of Medellín still love Pablo Escobar.
Very much so.
In fact, some think he's a hero, because why not? He built sports (and you know how South America loves sports) centres and schools, planted trees and provided public housing in the community. Also, he brutally murdered anyone whom he perceived as "against" him and that was not limited to his cocaine-peddling co-workers. This egoistic, amour propre, narcissistic, bighead, alpha-and-omega attitude often spilt from cocaine processing kitchens onto an innocent newspaper editor, a truckload of good cops on patrol, consummate legislators, or sometimes as low as a lowly drunkard who uttered a few drunken slurs that the Antioquian cowboy prince didn't like.
If you think this is the type of person that the world needs, then you should never be allowed near explosives.
If you are this type of person yourself, then you will certainly love former POTUS Barrack Obama, the culprit who provoked this post and the man who absolutely turned a once prosperous country to rubble and has now set up an organization to "help".
The highly experienced Natasha MH warned that if you want to rant, you shouldn’t do it on paper (write) and I absolutely agree but allow me one moment of weakness. After all, The Godfather said every man should be allowed one moment of foolishness in his life.
Possibly more than one, I should add, obviously not being Don Corleone as I am.
However!
Back to Barrack Obama, who made a post on Twitter yesterday soliciting support for his organization that is "on the ground providing urgent aid in the aftermath of the catastrophic flash floods in Northeast Libya."
Now, that’s a really nice touch right there. Let’s add a fancy humanitarian award to the Nobel Peace prize Obama has already won after we unroll his very philanthropic resumé.
They say the first African slave was a king. He was abducted on the coast of East Africa by a Portuguese explorer. This King pleaded and bargained and promised that if he were returned, the following year he’d provide ten people in exchange for his freedom.
He was released.
The following year the same explorer landed in the same area and ten people were led to the shore and presented to him. The next year over 100 slaves were returned to Europe. And the next year they wanted more.
And the next year.
And the next year.
And the next year.
It is said that you could walk from Africa to America on the backs of her stolen children and never would a boot get wet.
Would slavery have existed without this bargain?
Perhaps the question should be, would the bargain have existed without the desire for a slave?
Would Libya need Obama’s organization were it not for Obama?
From a desert to a forest; Libya under Gaddafi.
"I will not go into exile to any foreign country. I was born here in Libya and I will die here. This country was a desert and I turned it into a forest, where everything can grow", Muammar Gaddafi.
Libya was and still is Africa's biggest oil deposit, yet Gaddafi diversified the country's economy by creating the Great Man-Made River (GMMR) that ran across the length of Libya, thereby boosting Agricultural production tenfold. So, when he said he turned the country into a forest where everything can grow, he wasn't merely throwing words around.
Including that, here's highlights of Libya's socioeconomic situation under Muammar Gaddafi in bullet points;
- There was no electricity bill in Libya. Electricity was free for all citizens.
- Banks were state-owned and loans were given to all citizens at a 0% interest.
- Education and Healthcare were free. During Gaddafi’s regime, Libya was 83% literate.
- Libya has no foreign debt and a foreign reserve of up to $150 billion (now frozen globally).
- If a Libyan was unable to find employment after graduation, the state paid him/her the average salary of the profession until he/she found employment.
- A mother who gave birth received $5,000 as child support up front.
- The home was considered a human right under Gaddafi.
- The price of petrol in Libya was $0.14 per litre
- A portion of the revenue from oil sales was credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
- The government subsidized 50% of car prices for all citizens.
Then the International Community, which invariably means America and any other country that agrees with its policy, struck and Libya plunged and continues to drown.
If you must cut, persuade the victim you are a surgeon.
In August 2011, as Libya’s rebels and Nato jets began an assault on Tripoli, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi delivered a speech calling on his supporters to defend the country from foreign invaders.
“There is a conspiracy to control Libyan oil and to control Libyan land, to colonise Libya once again. This is impossible, impossible. We will fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya from east to west, north to south,” he said in a message broadcast by a pro-regime television station. Two months later, the dictator was dragged bleeding and confused from a storm drain in his hometown of Sirte, before being killed.
Twelve years after the outbreak of a second civil war, Gaddafi's proclamation is not far from the truth as consequently a constellation of emboldened regional powers, including the UK and France, descended - and continue to descend- on Libyan oil.
The marauding imperialist West's strategy has always been to, while showing their hands, hide their faces behind the plethora of one-sided International organizations. If it isn't the UN Security Council, it will be the International Criminal Court which do-you-know-know? The US passed a law (the Hague Invasion Act) which authorizes their president to invade the International Criminal Court Hague and remove any of its military personnel or elected officials convicted therein - that's if they ever are going to be convicted.
In this case, they found a mask in the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 and faced their guns on Libya, and instead of maintaining neutrality and protecting the civilian population as stipulated by the resolution, they took the side of the rebels, betraying the mandate and maliciously coming down on Gaddafi at full throttle.
That was the plan initially anyway; to murder Gaddafi. Nothing more.
Sad to see the old slave mill is grinding slow but grinding still.
“No one loves this land more than its citizens. If Europe and America tell you that they love you, be careful. They love the wealth of your land. The oil and not the people”. — Muammar Gaddafi
More than half a century after independence, almost all of Africa still depended on Western assistance. And that’s exactly how the colonial masters want it. Organizations such as the IMF and WTO are equipped to see that the situation remains unchanged. This way, Africa remains in the control of the West forever, cutting down our bamboo and selling us toothpicks in return; the old slave mill is grinding slow but grinding still and it’s sad to see.
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was above control. Sometimes under his reign, Libya's GDP per capita rose twice as high as that of America. Libya had no foreign debt and Libya's oil wasn't a massage syrup for Tony Blair nor David Cameron.
So when a civil war brewed, the West couldn't let the African Union handle it. Many years after independence, it's the colonial masters who settle Africa's problems.
But Israel has broken more UN resolutions than any other nation, more than twice as many as Gaddafi ever did. Yet, where is the global police?
The Myth
The propaganda of the West is that Gaddafi’s own people killed him.
Nonsense!
Which President/Minister/King/Queen is accepted 100%? Which country is there no rebels? How many Americans hated Donald Trump? How many Brits despised David Cameron? What would happen if another country, heck, a host of countries came and sponsored these rebels, spreading propaganda in their favour, wholly empowering them? Imagine if the Trump insurrection happened in a third-world country and a world power was supporting the rebels. Hmm…
Africa is asleep and not soon to wake
Starting from 2013 when Boko Haram terrorists abducted 300 secondary school girls in the Northeastern region of Nigeria, then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan repeatedly reached out to Barack Obama for help to curb the menace of spreading terrorism in the country.
Goodluck Jonathan was dining -as they say- and wining with America at that time and had voted for the motion to let Western powers invade Libya.
Now was the time for proper, legitimate help asked by a democratically elected president. However, after a series of evasive technicalities, Obama refused point blank.
Unsurprisingly. Although Mr Jonathan ranted about it in his book "My Transition Hours" as if it wasn't something he should have envisaged.
But how could he when Africa is still asleep?
It is crystal clear - well not so crystal to corrupt leaders who care very little about us- that the West aren't (has never been) in Africa to offer any substantial assistance, even less when it matters, but to, hiding behind the impression of "helping," to feed off the resources-sumptuous continent to their fill which is never-ending.
Conclusion; it’s Africa’s problem after all.
There’s no denying that Europe underdeveloped - and continue to underdevelop- Africa (shout out to Walter Rodney for such a brilliant book) but now at least African leaders are letting them. And this is depressing.
I hope that we wake up as a people and commandeer our development, much like China has done and India is doing. And when we do, let’s not look up to the devil on the cross for salvation. There’s no salvation there, just a mirage, deception, and thievery.
