New Zealanders for Gaddafi?

As Muammar Gaddafi engaged in slaughter against the Libyan people, it may be timely to note those with a high profile in New Zealand who thought he had a lot going for him.

The leftwing blogosphere has plenty wishing for his overthrow, even calling for military intervention of some kind.  The Greens are even supporting a revolution.

I guess if a high profile New Zealander talked favourably about Gaddafi now, it would not be seen in a positive light.  Though I can't be so sure of that.

Yet when it comes to those who have been to Libya, spoken favourably of it and were friendly to the Gaddafi regime, it's "ok".  Those people are forgiven.  Yet John Key when asked by a journalist whether he would tell Mubarak (a clearly far less brutal dictator, and no war-mongerer) to resign, he said no - and got excoriated for it.

The hard left community has long been soft towards Libya, because for years Libya was anti-American, it supported revolutionaries all over the world, including Maori nationalist thugs who wanted armed rebellion in New Zealand.  Gaddafi always felt a soft spot for anyone wanting to take on the liberal democratic West.

The late Syd Jackson being one of those thugs. 

He went to Libya to see Gaddafi's theories in practice and met him, and discussed Libya imposing trade sanctions on New Zealand.   Idiot Savant preferred to just consider him a union leader and broadcaster, brushing over his Gaddafi-philia.  However, the left is remarkably forgiving of its own kind being friendly with known mass murderers, typically dismissing accusations by claiming its opponents are the same - it's the plea of the man who beats up his wife who points out that the man over the road is beating up his wife too, why don't you harass him?

It is hardly a robust defence.

Hone Harawira spoke fondly of him, but only Dr. Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia - both Ministers in the current government said this on his passing:

"He had the keen intellect to grasp complex issues, a quality which you would see coming through in campaigns such as encouraging Libya to boycott trade with New Zealand".

None of those current MPs can really be said to be particularly negative towards Gaddafi.

I'm not exactly trusting of Sharples and Turia to be keen identifiers of intellect.

It is not just Syd though.  Keith Locke was once sympathetic, as can be seen in this "Just Peace" newsletter penned by him on the Green Party website where he calls for:

"if you wish to take part as one of the walking wounded representing countries bombed and oppressed by the US government" listing Libya as one of them.

The fact Gaddafi's regime was sponsoring terrorism across the world, including the UK and Germany and had been waging war against Chad didn't matter.

Keith has only just started protesting against Libya.  You see he saw Libya as a "victim" as well, with the "see no evil" hands over his eyes when Libya killed people in other countries.

Apparently ruthless military/socialist dictatorships can't be imperialist.

However, New Zealand is always so forgiving of those who cuddle up to thugs, with the mass media largely willing to give them a free pass.

and now

Gaddafi is gone, and there was nary a peep of concern expressed by those who might be thought to have been his friends.  Those who once gave succour to his regime (and gained it) will forever keep a low profile.

Democracy is not freedom

I'm not as pessimistic as Peter Cresswell over Libya, because the country has never itself been a hotbed of Islamism, and there has been only scant evidence of Islamist involvement in the rebel movement.  Indeed, the loudest claims about Islamists have come from the Gaddafi regime, keen to scare its erstwhile Western friends into supporting Gaddafi.  Libya has had over 40 years of a regime that embraced Islam, but also pushed a secularist agenda based on Gaddafi's erratic Green Book.   Libya neither has the history of Islamism that Egypt has had, nor the poverty and sectarianism that have bolstered Islamism elsewhere.  Of course, I hope I am not wrong, yet there is a window of hope for Libya emerging.

I believe Libya will have a better future without Gaddafi, but let's not pretend that "liberation" of Libya means Libyans will be free - they will simply be less oppressed and have some freedoms that were denied them under Gaddafi.  For the oft-repeated statement "the Libyan people will now be in control of their destiny" or "the Libyan people will not determine their future" has been said in some form or another by the likes of Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy and others.

However what does that mean?

At best what they mean is that Libyan can become a democracy, and that Libyans can then vote for their government.  

However, ticking a box on a ballot is not being in control of your destiny.

A functioning liberal democracy (bear in mind that in the Arab world only Iraq can be said to come close to this) has to have certain core freedoms to function.  Freedom of assembly and association, so that political parties can be formed and operate, and for people to organise politically outside parties, are rather essential.   Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are essential for a proper contest of ideas to occur.   Almost as important are for the core functions of the state to operate objectively, so that when laws are enforced they do not target based on political belief, or when elections are held, the counting or management is not subject to corruption.

It would be a bold presumption to say that Libya is about to get all of that.  For even some ostensibly liberal democracies in Europe have struggled to manage this 20 years after the end of the communist bloc.

However, even if Libya appeared to have all of that, would Libyans really have control of their own destiny?

Unless Libya's future government is constitutionally constrained to protect Libyan's individual freedom, then all democracy will do is put their destiny in the hands of the largest number of hands.   You don't have control of your destiny, when your rights are up for a vote.

For example, will Libya protect apostasy?  It hasn't been a crime so far, but it is a serious criminal offence in much of the Muslim world, including Egypt (with the death penalty in many countries).

Will Libyan private property rights be protected?  Human rights advocates rarely care at all about this, yet it is about protecting the products of people's minds, which is essential for survival.

Will Libyans be entitled to live their lives in peace as long as they respect the rights of other Libyans to do the same?  Or will they face restrictions based on politics or religion?

The only way Libyans will have control over their own destiny, is when the word "they" means "each and every individual independently deciding how to live their lives" in peace with each other.

That could only come if Libya gained a government that existed not to initiate force against them, but to protect them from the initiation of force.   To ensure that under a liberal democracy, it would need a constitution to protect that.   I doubt that in the wildest dreams of most of the rebels that such an idea is in the minds of many.

Eliminating a totalitarian dictatorship, particularly one that was so outwardly aggressive towards other countries (though funnily enough you rarely heard the so-called "peace" movement decrying Libyan imperialism), is positive.  It is likely Libyans will have more freedom than they have had for a long time, but let's not pretend that they will have "control of their destiny".  

At best they will have a very small say in the government that will control their destiny.   It is like asking the slaves to vote on who will be their master.

Bye bye Gaddafi, well done rebels and NATO

From the reports overnight, it appears that the Gaddafi regime is either in tatters or on the verge of engaging a final bloody battle. I wouldn’t put it past Gaddafi to do the latter, for the one thing that can be certain of the last 40 years of his regime, it is his willingness to lie incessantly and to react murderously on a whim.

There is, of course, great reason to celebrate the end of Gaddafi. He has spent his whole career following a megalomaniacal path of personality cult and self-aggrandisement, considering himself to be leader of Africa (and getting a semi-polite muted response from most of the rest of Africa, mainly because it looked forward to gaining some of his oil wealth in exchange for his friendship) and supporter of umpteen terrorist causes from around the world. He has over that period aided, funded and armed plenty from the IRA to the 1970s Marxist terrorist gangs in the West, such as the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades in West Germany and Italy. He supported communist insurgents in the Philippines, and often declared his solidarity with the Palestinians, though was not exactly a friend of the PLO. Of course he will be most well known in the West for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 and the bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986.   He also provided extensive funds to the Ceausescu regime in its development of a weapons industry (Gaddafi and Ceausescu were particularly warm with each other), whilst Romanian spies stole intellectual property from Western firms, and both countries developed chemical weapons.

Perhaps the one odd thing about Gaddafi is that you can almost always predict that he would be on the side of the dictatorial, the fascist, the murdering and the anti-Western. He supported Idi Amin in his fight against Tanzania, and granted the murderous brute asylum when he was overthrown. He supported the Iranian revolution and has long maintained warm relations with the Iranian Islamist regime.

He waged war against his dirt poor southern neighbour of Chad, and bombed a French airliner in retaliation for French intervention to protect Chad. All the time having warm relations with the USSR, and gaining Soviet arms. He pursued development of chemical weapons although has never used them. More recently, Libya sought to improve relations with the rest of the world, but notably provided cheap oil to Zimbabwe in solidarity with Robert Mugabe. He also supported the now fallen Tunisian dictatorship of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Domestically, he ran an economy almost entirely dependent on oil wealth that would rise and fall according to the price of oil. In the 1970s he embarked on a socialist programme that included at one point free supermarkets, but this all collapsed in the 1980s as oil prices dropped and economic sanctions from the West tightened up markets for Libya. The more recent rises in oil prices have helped, along with his sudden willingness to co-operate with the West following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime. This, of course, saw him courting plenty willing to turn a blind eye to his past, from Prince Andrew to the London School of Economics.

Meanwhile, he ran a regime that was heavily focused on his own personality cult and the worship of his incoherent body of ranting called the Green Book. In this he mixes Islam, socialism and a disdain for free speech and liberal democracy in the style of an unhinged man. He would be funny, if he were not so lethal. Gaddafi was always ruthless towards political opponents or those suspected of plotting against the regime. Like any such regime he ran a ruthless secret police force, and Libya was never ever a haven for human rights.

Anyone with a smidgeon of belief in freedom will celebrate his overthrow, although it is unclear what will follow, it is difficult to imagine it could be worse. Certainly, the risk of an Islamist revolution seems slight in Libya. As a curious footnote, it might be worthwhile to find those in New Zealand who were once acolytes of Gaddafi. Like veteran Maori radical Mike Smith, the late communist radical Syd Jackson felt warm about Gaddafi’s regime. New Zealand’s media is all incredibly forgiving of those who were friends with mass murderers, but then again what can you expect from those who don't check their facts to justify an editorial line.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the fifth columnists in the West who will denounce all of this, who will claim that all along they opposed Gaddafi, but also opposed NATO’s intervention to protect the rebels and civilians from Gaddafi’s own war against his own people.   People like Andrew Murray, a noted sympathiser of the Kim Jong Il hereditary nepotocracy, who not long ago was damning the whole thing in the Guardian.  The ones who would rather sit on the fence and impale their moral reputation than accept that a people have overthrown a militarist dictatorship, that was more than willing to use its own army to crush opposition. For you see, for the leftist apologists of Gaddafi to accept that, they would have to accept that NATO did GOOD, that the UK and France (let’s not pretend the Obama Administration led this, or did more than come in behind) acted morally and justifiably against this murderous tyrant. Watch now as they point at Syria and say it is hypocritical not to intervene there, yet these very same people would oppose such a move. Watch as they deftly ignore Castro and Chavez's warm support for Gaddafi, brothers in blood spilling.  Dare a NZ journalist ask Hone Harawira's view on any of this?  Maybe someone might seek to go to Tripoli to do some research on the regime's archives and see how many lowlives worldwide were paid off by this regime?

Watch also as Obama, suddenly come out of his shell, to proclaim a kind of victory months after he was the do-nothing President.  

This is a victory by ordinary Libyans, who watched their neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt reject tyranny.  It was supported by NATO, but only because Cameron and Sarkozy were determined to prevent a bloodbath on their doorstep (and had a degree of guilt for how UK and French governments had appeased the regime in recent years).  Italy and Germany were obstructive, the USA tagged on behind.

Now is a chance to rebuild, for Libya to be a friend and for the truths of Gaddafi's decades of waging war on the outside world and tyranny on his own people, to come out.

UPDATE:  The New Statesman reminds us of some of Gaddafi's erstwhile friends.  Remember the one career where you can be feted internationally, at the expense of foreign taxpayers, whilst maintaining a record of mass murder, is to be a politician.  Yet so many people still like politicians to make decisions for them.

Professor Juan Cole writes top ten myths of the war in Libya.  It includes the perpetual (and vile) claim that it is all about oil.

The value of the African Union's deal on Libya

Nil.  Indeed it may make things worse.

Nothing at all.  It is because the African Union is an association of killers, rapists, thieves and scum of the earth.

The only compromise possible with murdering dictators is your own slavery.   Jacob Zuma came from Tripoli having "negotiated a ceasefire" with a man who happily uses jet fighters, artillery and snipers on his own people.  Why not "negotiate a ceasefire" with your next armed murderer?  Or perhaps this is what crime fighting is like in South Africa.

The African Union is chaired by none other than Obiang Nguema Mbasogo - President of Equatorial Guinea, since 1979, having undertaken a coup against his insanely drug riddled murdering uncle -Macias Nguema.   Equatorial Guinea has remained under the iron grip of Obiang, whilst he and his family, including his playboy son Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, enjoy the lavish wealth of one of Africa's richest oil-soaked countries, whilst most of the population remains illiterate and with a subsistence lifestyle.

The African Union has improved performance in recent years, suspending the Ivory Coast and Madagascar because of their political crises.  It should do the same for Libya.  The problem is Libya helps fund the kleptocratic scum and their comfy lifestyles.   Zimbabwe notably has also faced no real sanctions from the African Union.   It refuses to recognise the international arrest warrant that was imposed against Omar Bashir of Sudan in response to the massacred in Darfur.

In short, a club of scoundrels is not a reliable one to eject or punish one who acts as they do.

The rebels in Libya quite rightly are ignoring all of this.  Jacob Zuma, who leads a country that is increasingly looking more and more like a one-party state in practice if not in law, has no standing or credibility in Libya for anyone other than Gaddafi seeking power.

The West is always wrong

You have to hand it to the so-called "peace" movement and the left.  They are as adept in chicaning their way around principle and consistency in position in all but one way - the West is always wrong.

Throughout the Cold War, both the West and the Soviet bloc (and China as much as it acted independently) all acted uniformly under the principle of realpolitik.  Interests were at stake, and each side supported allies as a bullwark against the other.  For the USSR and China, this never presented domestic problems because domestic problems were always resolved with the barrel of a gun so to speak.  Neither had to deal with protest marches, civil disobedience, bad press or the like, for they were (China still is to an extent) totalitarian prison camps.  Both happily backed, armed, clapped, funded and facilitated mass murder, torture, starvation and grotesque inhumanities in their own and many other countries.  Both had plenty of supporters in Western academia and a few in politics who were either taken in by the propaganda or simply were so anti-Western they embraced the obvious alternative.

The West didn't have such luxuries, for it had (and has) freedom.  Defence and foreign policy would be challenged, not only at the ballot box and within the political sphere, but with protests, free press and open civil society, its action would alway be open to scrutiny.  Quite right too.  However, those who would point the finger at the West on foreign policy and defence could not do so in the Soviet bloc.  Moscow knew this of course and helped fund several branches of the peace movement, figuring it could weaken the West by helping promote popular opinion in the West to disarm and withdraw - knowing similar calls in the Soviet block could be eradicated forthwith.

So it was simple - the peace movement and the left would, by and large, focus on what the West did wrong, because it was easy to report, and in fact it was seen as easier to change.  It was always far easier to point out the hypocrisy of Western realpolitik.  Our "interests" were in having allies that fought the allies of the Soviet bloc, yet these were on more than a few occasions inconsistent with the values people in Western countries saw as being the hallmark of superiority of Western liberal capitalist democracies over Marxism-Leninism.   Suharto, Marcos, Pinochet, Rhee, Somoza, Mobutu and others were often as bloodthirsty with opponents and as uninterested in free speech as their opponents.  The left in the West jumped on these and damned Western support for them.  This was the right thing to do, but they also turned a blind eye to the Soviet alternatives.

However, this philosophy of damning Western intervention in other countries remained after the end of the Cold War, although few noticed that suddenly more than a few non-Marxist dictatorships fell in relatively quick succession.  The end of apartheid in South Africa was partly facilitated by the end of the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique as the West withdrew support in parallel to the Soviet Union withdrawing support for their sides.  Chile, Zaire, Taiwan and South Korea all saw significant reforms with mixed success.   Then came Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly one of the nastiest dictators of the post war era (and he has plenty of competition).  He became important to both the West and the USSR when Iran fell to Islamist clerics, and was itself sabre-rattling against the US, USSR and Israel, so Saddam gained support from both sides in the Cold War, to take on Iran.  Pure realpolitik against a threatening enemy.  Yet it achieved nothing, except the spilling of the blood of hundreds of thousands, and a convenient target for the left - the West had backed another bloodthirsty thug, and Iran had not been contained.

Then Saddam attacked Kuwait.  There was a near unanimous international consensus in favour of ejecting him from Kuwait, yet the leftwing "peace movement" with the likes of the odious hypocritical Janus-like George Galloway condemning how the West attacked Iraq, after cossetting it for so long.  

You see with the peace movement, you can't correct your previous bad behaviour.  So whilst Saddam was expelled from Kuwait, subjected to two no-fly zones and extensive economic sanctions, in fact that was all wrong.  Because he had had Western backing before, he shouldn't be attacked now - the West is to blame for him.

Then after that, Saddam's continued breaching of UN Security Council resolutions and failure to allow the IAEA full inspection of all facilities it requested access to meant nothing.  Saddam should be left alone, even though he murdered Iraqis on a daily basis.  In fact, economic sanctions on Iraq, which hurt Iraqis not Saddam, should be lifted - not because it was Saddam's fault, but the West's fault for "killing Iraqi children" as Saddam used his population as propaganda.  

Remember the left warmly embraced economic sanctions against the South African racist regime, but for Iraq Saddam was now to be appeased.  Iraq was to be "left alone", for this wasn't a dictatorship that should face sanctions or military action.

Then, 9/11 happened.  The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had barely caused a murmur in the "peace movement", but Western backing for the mujahideen did.  The Taliban winning power in Afghanistan also barely caused a murmur, except for its radical misogyny and destruction of some historic statues.  However, the attack against the Taliban regime, which had sheltered and supported Al Qaeda, was wrong.  It was wrong for the US to strike against those who harboured and supported those who attacked and killed thousands of people on its soil.   It was wrong to overthrow those who treated girls as chattels denying them education, banning music and executed anyone who didn't support their stone age theocracy.  

G.W. Bush attacked Iraq, in part because of Saddam's continued defiance of UN Security Council Resolutions, in part because of a belief that regime change and installation of a Western friendly democracy in Iraq would be positive for the region.  It was appallingly undertaken, but it gave backbone to the peace movement which saw it as death and destruction.  Saddam's overthrow was bemoaned by few, but the performance and behaviour of a few troops became a reason to damn the lot.  Furthermore, the rise of an Islamist insurgency, which at one point was peddling death on a daily basis through bombing, saw the peace movement attribute those deaths to the West.  After all, if Saddam hadn't been overthrown, Iraq would be peaceful (blank out Saddam's tendency to turn on his population randomly).   Little credit was given to overthrowing a tyrant the left had opposed in any case.   Less credit was given to fighting the Islamist insurgency with some even backing them.  

The Western leftwing "peace movement" support for Islamist terrorists in Iraq said so much about the belief in peace and human rights that they claimed - it was profoundly empty. What mattered was to oppose whoever the West supported, to oppose whatever the West did.

So Saddam was opposed when the West supported him.  Saddam was supported when the West opposed him.   The peace movement as hypocritical as the West it finger pointed at.   Note that never did the USSR or Russia get damned for their roles in any of it.

The recent revolutions in the Arab world have also had similar responses.  Tunisia and Egypt were both led by Western-friendly dictators, so the West was blamed for both of them.   Blamed for intervening to prop them up.  Except this time, the West did nothing of the sort.  It sat back and let things happen.

That was wrong though.   You see it should have "done more" to ensure the dictators it supported before were overthrown.  Um...

So along comes Gaddafi.  Avowedly anti-Western, a murdering tyrant if ever there was one.  Ronald Reagan bombed one of his palaces in the 80s after Gaddafi had a bomb go off in a West Berlin nightclub, but that wasn't acceptable to the left.   Gaddafi blew up an airliner, which certainly saw more opposition to him (George Galloway to be fair damned Gaddafi consistently after this).  However, beyond that his exploits were largely ignored by the left.   Then, after the overthrow of Saddam, Gaddafi put his hands up, said he was no longer pursuing WMDs, and sought friendly relations - which he got.

Now of course his own people, emboldened by events in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, have had enough.  Barack Obama has decided the US is now taking a largely isolationist stance, so it took France and the UK to lead efforts to introduce a no fly zone and undertake airstrikes against Libyan military targets that were threatening civilian.  Even the rather odious Arab League supported the No Fly Zone.  

So a popular revolution in Libya is being supported in the air, by Western forces.  No ground troops and no sense of occupation.  It is all about protecting civilians.  While the West was not taking action, it was criticised.  Now it is taking action.

It isn't good enough though.   The left is damning it because Libya has oil and gas, so a side effect of getting rid of Gaddafi will be to have a regime (hopefully) which is a democracy that will sell oil and gas.  That of course is a good thing, unless you are part of the left/peace-movement/environmentalist faction that thinks consumption of oil and gas kills babies, destroys trees and impoverishes continents.  Apparently the West shouldn't intervene when it suits its interests.

Beyond that, the intervention is damned by conspiracy theorist Robert Fisk because there can be no guarantee the replacement of Gaddafi will be squeaky clean.   Well yes.  If you don't want an invasion and occupation, that's the risk.  The intervention so far is just to protect Libyans from air and naval strikes, and major ground force attacks.   If it was more, the West would be wrong again.   Fisk also recalls a civilian victim of the US attack in 1986, but interestingly it is noted that the woman's mother supports Gaddafi being overthrown - not quite as simple as it first seemed.

George Galloway, who has long damned Gaddafi appeared on Sky News damning the attacks, not because of the effect on Libyans, but because the West hadn't also intervened in Bahrain, Yemen or Saudi Arabia.

Well no.  There is no obligation to intervene, at all.  However, the opportunity exists and it is in Western interests, so the decision is made to intervene.  That is quite morally justified.

It would be morally justified to intervene in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia as well, although in Bahrain there is the issue of the US Navy Fifth Fleet being based there.  A major decision would need to be made on relocating it if it was decided to turn on Bahrain's murderous monarchy.   Yemen's insurgents include a substantial outpost of Al Qaeda.  Intervention there would be wholly justified, but the unintended consequences could be far worse.   Saudi Arabia is another story.  It would be a formidable foe, the economic impacts alone of Saudi turning off oil supplies would be catastrophic, and would directly harm millions in the West, it would not go down without a fight, and as the home of Mecca, a Western attack would undoubtedly instigate substantial Muslim support against it.

In short, intervention in Libya is low cost, relatively high gain and positive.  The other cases don't stack up.

However, that doesn't matter.  The West is always wrong.

It was wrong to damn Gaddafi for so long, despite his record for murder and terrorism. 

It was wrong to respond positively when Gaddafi stopped engaging in terrorism and pursuing WMDs - he is a tyrant.

It was wrong to sit by and do nothing while Libyans fought Gaddafi (because of the relatively positive relations the West had with Gaddafi since 2002).

It is now wrong to intervene to protect Libyans fighting Gaddafi - because it should intervene elsewhere.

No doubt if the West actually did intervene in Bahrain and Saudi, it would be bad because the claim would be it is about oil.  If it intervened in Yemen, the claim would be that it is the "war on terror", which the left rejects.

Which is why the so-called "peace movement" can and should be ignored.  It has only one principle, opposition to the West.  It isn't seriously interested in peace, or human rights, or democracy, or anything it claims.  

Watch them now defend Gaddafi - once more - and pretend it is about opposing war.

Fear, Fascism and isolationism

Those are the three themes that I am getting from the stories that should be most shaking up New Zealanders.

Fear

The greatest publicity has been for the trifecta of emergencies in Japan.  The earthquake, which was largely survived in its own right, thanks to technology, vigilance by property owners and compliance with strict laws.   The tsunami, which demonstrated how powerless people are with little warning, once again.  Now the nuclear emergency, which is a mix of genuine concern and fear, and ridiculou hyperbole.  New Zealand is only affected by the harm to Japan's economy, not the spread of isotopes.  However, environmentalists will dine out on this for some time to demand lower electricity consumption and "investment" in expensive forms of electricity generation.   There will be scope for post-mortems of the nuclear emergency, but for now two other matters should be of higher priority.

Fascism

First is closer to home.  It IS fascism, a term overused perhaps by some libertarians, but it is plain and simple in Christchurch.  Private property has been appropriated, not to protect the public, but because central and local government are applying the thumping hammer of blunt authority to clear away the damage as quickly as possible.

Not PC puts it beautifully in describing how a pin-up for vapid womens' magazines gets more access to central Christchurch properties than the people who, without which, the damned businesses (damned indeed) wouldn't be there in the first place.

Like a panzer division of wreckers, the state has authorised demolition squads to go in and destroy what is NOT theirs.

Eric Crampton's list of outrages should send shivers down the spines of property owners throughout New Zealand.  This could happen to you.  THIS is what central and local government think of you - it isn't the warm friendly collectively helpful image that the morally bankrupt left claim - it is the "we know best, get out of our way" approach that says a great "fuck you" to the people who create the wealth, who pay the wages of public "servants".

Meanwhile what do you get from politicians? A blind eye.  You should all be furious, because they are scum for not standing up for Christchurch property owners.

The government of course is complicit.  There is now no shred of belief that the National Party believes in property rights or business, its true colours have been shown here, and it is disgusting.

Not one fucking press release demanding that property owners have the right to access their properties, that properties should not be destroyed without the consent or even  notice given to the owners.  Nothing.  If you still vote National after this, then I DO hope you face the same situation one day - because frankly you're complicit in endorsing these useless inert nobodies in just accepting what their bureaurats tell them.

Instead, John Key thanks the pin-up and his consort for their "support" in getting a taxpayer supported piece of disaster tourism (2 sites in one country).   Not that it is their fault that they get the privileged access to Christchurch, it is the government's.

Of course along with National is the Maori Party (which only believes in property rights for part of the population), Peter Dunne (who as Minister in charge of legalised theft is uninterested) and ACT.  What's ACT said?  Fuck all of course.  Rodney Hide is setting up a new bureaucracy to enable councils to borrow through central government instead.  Given ACT has effectively endorsed the Labour/Alliance/Green vision of local government powers, who should be surprised?

The left, naturally, regards property rights as something that applies to them when someone wants to mug them in the street and that's about it.  The state can (and should) run roughshod over such rights in the "public good" as it sees it from that point of view.  The Greens, Labour and Jim Il Sung are contemptuous about business, employers and property rights, and ever trusting of government agencies.

However, what about you?  Are you going to tolerate a fascist style demolition of buildings without even advising the owners?  Are you going to tolerate zero accountability for those looking after the "protected area" of central Christchurch? Are you going to tolerate it being ok for the pinup from the UK and his consort to gain access to Christchurch that the people who fucking build and make Christchurch alive don't have?

Of course you are - you're New Zealanders - you'll vote for John Key again because you're not discontented enough and because Phil Goff is about as inspiring as a pair of socks.  You'll trust local government again because you're fearful of actually having power in your own hands, but most of all you'll do nothing because you're not personally affected.

Isolationism

There couldn't be a clearer message to dictatorships in the past few weeks from the United States, it is "We don't intervene anymore".

Despite the vapid generalisations from some quarters.  The dictatorships in the Middle East all vary by degrees and kinds.  The Tunisian one was easy, he rolled over quickly.  Egypt took more time, but ultimately the fact the US bankrolls the regime was significant, and Mubarak eventually rolled over as well.  Gaddafi is different, not just in degree, but nature.  He is despicably evil, a murdering megalomaniacal thug.  At worst he is unhinged and merciless.   His record of intervening in other countries is extensive, although he withdrew from this primarily because he observed the US invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein - an act that would be far simpler to do in Libya.

Protestors and rebels in Libya have been encouraged, verbally, by Western powers and others, demanding that the Gaddafi autocracy go.  However, in terms of action, little has been done since Westerners were evacuated.  The Obama regime has been silent, and so Gaddafi has been acting with impunity to take back the country he has run as his own fiefdom.   The cartoon like view Gaddafi gives of himself may amuse some, but it comes with blood and death.

So a no-fly zone over Libya is obvious, it would cost little and help to ensure Gaddafi did not act with impunity.  The UK and France have been pushing for it (the latter ironic given France's history of warmth towards dictatorships), but Germany has resisted  - as if Germany really is able to exercise moral authority given its past performance in resisting action in the Balkans.  The UK and France have led efforts at the UN Security Council for a resolution.  Not the US.  Of course Russia and China are likely to oppose, or at best abstain. However, neither have any credibility when it comes to dealing with dictatorships, for obvious reasons.   So for that, I believe airstrikes and a no fly zone should be applied anyway, because the value in containing and disposing of the Gaddafi regime is worth it.   His regime lost legitimacy when it participated in Lockerbie and sponsoring terrorism in Europe and elsewhere.  There should be no legal or moral barrier to intervention from the air (ground intervention would be unwise though).

However, as much as I want Gaddafi removed, there is a more disturbing concern.  Obama's withdrawal of the US from the world says that other dictatorships can act with impunity, despite his words.  Syria has had protests that have been put down - another regime that has regularly disregarded international law by invading a neighbouring country - Lebanon.  Yet what is the Obama administration saying to the likes of Iran and North Korea by being so shy of doing anything?  It is saying that there are no consequences for all sorts of actions against their own people, but also that the US is relatively uninterested. 

You see the world the left wanted, with the US pulling out of other countries, and leaving civil conflicts to themselves, is happening more and more.  The result is that dictatorships feel less threatened, more emboldened and more powerful than they were under previous Administrations.

Obama has declared his hand on foreign policy.  It is progressive isolationism.  Withdrawal from Iraq will be followed by Afghanistan, and then where?

and if rebels in Benghazi are crushed by the efforts of the Gaddafi army and air force, all on TV, what will that say about the US interest in freedom in other countries?

Hitchens damns Obama's impotence

Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens shares my disappointment at Obama's complete failure to show any kind of leadership on Libya.

He writes:

it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi—an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy—and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned "violence" in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular—every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking.

Meanwhile as I have already said, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have placed themselves with Gaddafi.  China and Russia's authoritarian leaders have naturally sat on the fence, hoping their own people don't get any bright ideas or that anyone looks in their own blood splattered back yards.  Obama acts similarly.

It is an outrageous withdrawal from world affairs, one that would put no pressure at all on Russia or China to relent on a resolution at the UN Security Council.  Yes, in Egypt it was difficult for the US to be at the forefront in a revolution that deposed an erstwhile ally, when it both feared the instability but welcomed the call for freedom and democracy. Yet, with Libya it should have been different.

Hitchens continues pointing out the bravery of those without the world's most potent military on their side.

By the time of Obama's empty speech, even the notoriously lenient Arab League had suspended Libya's participation, and several of Qaddafi's senior diplomatic envoys had bravely defected. One of them, based in New York, had warned of the use of warplanes against civilians and called for a "no-fly zone." Others have pointed out the planes that are bringing fresh mercenaries to Qaddafi's side. In the Mediterranean, the United States maintains its Sixth Fleet, which could ground Qaddafi's air force without breaking a sweat. But wait! We have not yet heard from the Swiss admiralty, without whose input it would surely be imprudent to proceed.


Quite, it is so feeble as to be embarrassing.  Americans should be embarrassed and mortified at how far their country has fallen in international affairs.   It could take relatively painless steps and gain enormous goodwill and support in the region, and do more to generate friendship and pro-Western feeling than anything else could.   Though this is the same President cutting broadcasts by the Voice of America to China.

It is rather straightforward Mr President:

- Libya has long had a history of being an arch-enemy of the US and your allies;
- Gaddafi's history has been one of unashamedly shedding blood of innocents and supporting those who do so;
- The USA is, despite your inept efforts, still by far the world's largest economy and military superpower.

I even think Hillary Clinton would do more.

Dubya certainly would have.

Chavez and Castro side with Gaddafi

Pinup boy of so many in the left, from Ken Livingstone to Matt McCarten, Hugo Chavez, is siding with Gaddafi as is Fidel Castro (Spanish reports).

Who is surprised?

The international left has long been sympathetic to this thug, a thug who has chemical and biological weapons, admits it, who has engaged in terrorism against civilians whether by plane or by nightclub.  

They are all murdering thugs, all of whom happily use force against those who they disagree with, all part of the transnational community of tyrants.  The only difference with Chavez is that he is an elected one who has not been completely unhindered in his pursuit of power.

At what point will the lowlives in the West who have lauded the likes of Chavez and Castro admit they got it wrong?  That they, like the legions of useful idiots who denied the mass slaughter under Mao, who denied the mass slaughter under Stalin, some who even denied the Khmer Rouge's genocidal scale rivers of blood, who constantly apologised for regimes that are as bloodthirsty as the anti-Marxist military dictatorships and thugs who they targeted.

Those of us who actually do believe in individual freedom have been consistent, called a spade a spade.  Called Castro, Chavez, Pinochet, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, Suharto, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, Bokassa, Mobutu, the lot, all dictators.  All vile, all despicable, all inexcusable.  Some are worse than others, but none deserve to be celebrated or supported.

So what's wrong with some people?

NZ friends of the Gaddafi regime - Part 1 - Helen Clark

In her role as UNDP Secretary General, Helen Clark has to be diplomatic with all sorts of regimes as she flies around the globe in first class staying in five-star hotels showing concern for global poverty by not experiencing anything remotely close to it.

However, does she have to provide succuour, support and titles to relatives of dictators?  Apparently so.

Muammar Gaddafi's daughter was, until yesterday, a Goodwill Ambassador to the UNDP.   She has been removed, and rightly so.  However, why was she appointed in the first place?  Why is UNDP having a positive relationship with the Gaddafi dictatorship at all.

However, UNDP's relationship with Libya goes back to 1972.  Gaddafi was well established in power even then.  UNDP even now has a dedicated website showcasing how taxpayer money from across the world has been funnelled into projects in this oil rich dictatorship.  To be fair Libya also throws in some money to the projects, not that this makes it better.

The direct Aisha Gaddafi relationship also started before Clark in 2006, with this document formalising a relationship between Gaddafi's charity (Watassemo Charity Society) and UNDP.  Now anyone with an eye for how dictatorships work knows there could never be any transparency behind charities run in such regimes, which would make any such relationship questionable even without it being run by the daughter of a mass murdering tyrant.

It even has multi-year plans AGREED with the regime to help develop the country.

Now Helen Clark is only the latest in a long line of UN bureaurats to suck from the UN tit and be a party to this, but a party she certainly is.

You see whilst UNDP has been in Libya for almost 40 years, the Gaddafi relationship has been solid throughout.  The most recent move was only in 2009 to appoint Aisha Gaddafi as the goodwill ambassador of Libya on July 24, 2009 to address the issues of HIV/AIDS and violence against women in Libya, according to the Times of India.   So Helen Clark must have endorsed the appointment of the dictator's daughter to such a role.

Furthermore, the UNDP has also provided a facade for the nonsense of quality governance in Libya.  Its three year report states:

"Democratic governance. A new initiative on the automation of national courts, with a view to increasing public access to justice, was started in 2008 with completion expected by 2010."

Excuse me?  "Increasing public access to justice" in a Police state, where secret police forces routinely arrest people without trial.  The Human Rights Watch report says:

Hundreds of prisoners are detained by the Internal Security Agency without any legal basis. Over the past few years, an unprecedented confrontation between the General People’s Committee for Justice and the General People’s Committee for Public Security has developed over the failure of Internal Security to implement the decisions of Libyan courts.  The Internal Security Agency continues to refuse to release from Abu Salim and Ain Zara prisons, prisoners who either have been acquitted by courts or who have already served their court- imposed sentences.

Yet Helen Clark's UNDP talks of "democratic governance" and "access to justice" without ever mentioning any of this.  

Or this:

"The practice of enforced disappearance by Internal Security continues in Libya. Over the past decades, Internal Security agents have regularly detained individuals incommunicado in prisons or in Internal Security offices.  Libyan groups estimate that Libyan security officials have disappeared thousands of individuals over the past three decades"

Moreover:

Libya has no independent nongovernmental organizations. The only organizations that can do human rights work, the most sensitive area of all in Libya, derive their political standing from their personal affiliation with the regime.  The main organization that can publicly criticize human rights violations is the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (Gaddafi Foundation), chaired by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.  A second organization, Waatasemu, is run by Dr. Aisha al-Gaddafi, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi’s daughter, and has intervened in death penalty cases and women’s rights issues.

In other words, unless you can plead to the Gaddafi family, you have little chance at justice.

What does the UNDP focus on?

The overarching goal sounds innocuous, if Libya was not an authoritarian police state:

"National institutions strengthened towards improved public service delivery and strengthened national data management systems"

Nothing like having a police state better manage its data!

Then within justice, the goals are more asinine.  It is nothing about real justice, more about making a police state operate more effectively!

"Within the justice sector, UNDP will support the ongoing automation process of courts, conducting capacity assessments, and implementing specific capacity development activities. A specific focus will be on ensuring greater access to justice for women."

So Helen Clark's UNDP is focusing on ensuring greater access for women, which appears to mean automating the courts and developing the capacity of the justice sector - in a police state.  The programme includes in its goals "Civil society organizations actively engage in development efforts, notably related to gender issues, and provision of services" yet Human Rights Watch notes:

There is no freedom of association in Libya because the concept of an independent civil society goes directly against Gaddafi’s theory of governance by the masses. Law 71 still criminalizes political parties, and the penal code criminalizes the establishment of organizations that are “against the principles of the Libyan Jamahireya system.” Law 19, "On Associations," requires a political body to approve all nongovernmental organizations, does not allow appeals against negative decisions and provides for continuous governmental interference in the running of the organization.

It is a farce, but worse of all it is actively complicit in pretending that it NOT a farce.  In creating civil society organisations, that are actually tools of the regime to present an image of civil society.  It is no surprise that two bodies, run by Gaddafi's offspring, are the only ones that can discuss human rights.  It is beyond absurd, and any credible Secretary General of the UNDP would not tolerate this.  

I would be surprised if Clark knew the details, but therein lies the UN problem.  A behemoth under which the UN does not simply remain quiet about evil, but actively works with it and becomes part of its propaganda to sustain itself.  

Yet, this Libyan UNDP office has an explicit goal of "democratic governance" in a country that has absolutely none of it, led by a philosophy that is actively opposed to it.  

The UNDP Libya website says the following, which is about as cynical as one can be.   Talking of democracy, then about Libya "strengthening institutions" in a police state.  That would actively do the opposite:

"The critical importance of democratic governance in the developing world was highlighted at the Millennium Summit of 2000, where the world's leaders resolved to "spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development. A consensus was reached which recognized that improving the quality of democratic institutions and processes, and managing the changing roles of the state and civil society in an increasingly globalised world must underpin national efforts to reduce poverty, sustain the environment, and promote human development.
In Libya, UNDP is working with the national government to enhance the capacities of state institutions and staff, particularly in regards to the access to justice.   It is also working towards providing General People’s Committees with policy advice and technical support in different fields, utilising its network of over 166 offices, and its global partnerships with democratic governance institutions."

It would be hilarious, if the UNDP wasn't using your taxes, and is led by a former New Zealand Prime Minister to basically grant a degree of respectability and a facade of progress upon a dictatorship and his family.  Strengthening the Libyan dictatorship does not enhance democratic governance, it undermines it.

Effectively, Helen Clark is just leading a body that does little about Libya, which in that position one may forgive, but rather leads a body colluding with the Gaddafi regime.  Furthermore, I would be surprised if Clark did not endorse making Aisha Gaddafi a Goodwill Ambassador for UNDP.   A position she earned because daddy has been running Libya as his personal fiefdom for forty years.  Should Bashar Assad have got one for being son of his dictator dad, or Kim Jong Il (and now Kim Jong Eun)?  

So Helen Clark is the first New Zealander I claim as a friend of the Gaddafi regime, through her actions as leader of the UNDP.  The removal of Aisha Gaddafi's status is a bit after the fact, and a bit "oh we better do that given the population are being slaughtered".

Although maybe Helen Clark simply has the UN disease, the same disease that allows Libya to sit on the UN Human Rights Council, with China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

UPDATE:  Credit to Fairfacts Media for picking this up before I did, making the same point.  I wait to read the condemnation of Clark's actions from the leftwing blogosphere, as much as Tony Blair will be criticised rightly for his appeasement.

Obama opts out of the world (UPDATED)

Isn't it rather odd, than when Libya's dictatorship has used fighter aircraft to attack its own citizens, when it is difficult to engage evacuations deep into Libya (only Tripoli airport and Benghazi appear accessible), that the USA has such a low profile?

The appropriate response is clear:

- Declare a "no-fly zone" over Libya, that NATO will take control of Libyan airspace for the purposes of preventing use of military aircraft against civilians, and to allow for evacuation and aid missions to fly in unhindered.

- That means being willing to warn and shoot down Libyan air force aircraft if necessary, or escort them if they wish to defect.

However Obama has given up, he has withdrawn from the world.  The US as superpower is absent, if you see the White House website there is nothing at all about Libya.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she is "watching" with concern.

It's a fairly clear lesson, Gaddafi was scared of Bush sufficiently that he stopped sabre rattling and his WMD programme.   He isn't scared of Obama.

So that's it people.  The Obama Administration was more vocal about Egypt, because of Israel and because it was so obviously a key ally of the US.  Libya, an arch enemy, is almost irrelevant now.

Have a guess at what governments are quietly taking comfort from that, they have capital cities beginning with T, D and P. 

UPDATE:  Even the New York Times agrees.

"It took President Obama four days to condemn the violence. Even then, he spoke only vaguely about holding Libyan officials accountable for their crimes. Colonel Qaddafi was never mentioned by name....There is not a lot of time. Colonel Qaddafi and his henchmen have to be told in credible and very specific terms the price they will pay for any more killing. They need to start paying right now."

Intervention justified

Given Gaddafi's rants, proclamations and tortuous speech on TV a few hours ago, it is clear he is ready to spill as much blood as it takes to stay in power.

As such, it would be legitimate for others to come from outside, and shoot down any Libyan Air Force aircraft or helicopters that are firing at civilians, or to use force against his mercenaries to protect Libyans from the government they have.

The US wont of course, because Obama doesn't want to upset anyone and doesn't want to be thought of as George W.  Bush.  The rest of NATO wont either.  The regimes elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa are full of thugs and bullies who wouldn't dare.

So it should be possible for private citizens to step in and help support a revolution in Libya.  Of course, in New Zealand this isn't allowed because the last Labour Government, with full support of the Greens and United Future banned New Zealanders being paid mercenaries.  National opposed it, noting that Australia, UK and US are not signatories to the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries.

Gaddafi says there will be house to house searches to find and kill all protestors, and he would rather die a martyr than surrender power.

Hopefully this can be arranged. Gaddafi came out from the cold only because the war on Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein scared him.   An ultimatum from a US President might just do the very same.

The Libyan Jamahiriya News Agency is his official mouthpiece, and the website has deleted all news reports.  Let's hope that means that more of his vile police state is falling around him.   For the sake of Libyans this needs to end quickly, and if Gaddafi's head is disconnected from his body, then it may be for the best - as long as his family's bank accounts and foreign assets can be frozen.

Too little too late Saif

I watched the footage on Libyan state TV last night of Muammar Gaddafi's favourite son - his "Kim Jong Il" - Saif al-Islam Gaddafi - calling for an end to protests, blaming them on drug addicts, criminals and foreign troublemakers.

He threatened to fight to the last man and the last bullet.  He said that Libya risked civil war, and without the sharing of its oil wealth, Libyans would starve and be homeless.  Easy to say when you're the groomed son of a dictator who has access to billions in funds taken from the "Libyan Arab Socialist Jamahariya".  He parties while his people have a per capita GDP closer to Mexico, whilst having an economy 95% reliant on oil.

He offered reform, a "national dialogue" and some opening up.  Had he done this a year ago, and there had been substantive progress, then maybe the pressure might have been released.  Maybe.  However, Libya has had one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.  No private bodies or entities are permitted in Libya, without state authority.  Civil society, political parties, alternative media are all banned.  Even Egypt had a private sphere.

However, it is far too late now, and moreover his promise of reform was not done in any sense of seeking forgiveness, but with a bloody threat of death till the bitter end.

His father has long been proven to be a bloody vicious and unremittingly death worshipping thug, and the actions of some of the Libyan military and police have proven that, with reports of the air force gunning down civilians and two air force pilots defecting to Malta because they were ordered to shoot civilians. 

It is over, it is just a matter of time, but sadly a matter of bloodshed.  Actions there will continue to spooks the bullies in Bahrain, and across the Arab world.  I'm hoping Bashar Assad is next.

What Gaddafi thinks

Colonel Gaddafi is not a man who can readily be said to be a conventional dictator, except that many dictators expose themselves as being rambling ranters of peculiar philosophies.  His views are in what is his own rambling rant of incoherence, the Green Book (full text here).

What you see below are excerpts from it, most are good enough reason to relieve Libya from his rule!

He says of freedom of speech:

Democratically, private individuals should not be permitted to own any public means of publication or information. However, they have the right to express themselves by any means, even irrationally, to prove their insanity. Any journal issued by a professional sector, for example, is only a means of expression of that particular social group. It presents their own points of view and not that of the general public. This applies to all other corporate and private individuals in society.  The democratic press is that which is issued by a People's Committee, comprising all the groups of society. Only in this case, and not otherwise, will the press or any other information medium be democratic, expressing the viewpoints of the whole society, and representing all its groups.

It is basically a justification of a state monopoly media.  It justifies banning privately owned newspapers or other "means of information". Libya has shut down internet and mobile phone networks as it now proceeds to murder its citizens.

It gets more insane when he talks about economic matters:

"Wage-earners are but slaves to the masters who hire them. They are temporary slaves, and their slavery lasts as long as they work for wages from employers, be they individuals or the state. The workers' relationship to the owner or the productive establishment, and to their own interests, is similar under all prevailing conditions in the world today, regardless of whether ownership is right or left."

Nothing like totalitarians telling people they are slaves under alternative systems.

He doesn't think that people should own taxis or that anyone other than the state should own any transport operations:

In a socialist society, no person or authority has the right to own a means of transportation for the purpose of renting it, for this also means controlling the needs of others.

Don't think of living without a family because Gaddafi thinks you are worthless without one:

the individual without a family has no value or social life

On democracy and individual rights it is pretty clear as well:

Therefore, the only solution to the persistent problem of democracy is through The Third Universal Theory.

According to this theory, the democratic system is a cohesive structure whose foundations are firmly laid on Basic Popular Conferences and People's Committees which convene in a General People's Congress. This is absolutely the only form of genuine democratic society.

In summary, the era of the masses, which follows the age of the republics, excites the feelings and dazzles the eyes. But even though the vision of this era denotes genuine freedom of the masses and their happy emancipation from the bonds of external authoritarian structures, it warns also of the dangers of a period of chaos and demagoguery, and the threat of a return to the authority of the individual, the sect and party, instead of the authority of the people.

In other words there cannot be political parties, and "the authority of the individual" is a threat.  

 When he writes about women, his mental stability must be in question since he decides to embark on a lesson in biology:

According to gynaecologists, women menstruate every month or so, while men, being male, do not menstruate or suffer during the monthly period. A woman, being a female, is naturally subject to monthly bleeding. When a woman does not menstruate, she is pregnant. If she is pregnant, she becomes, due to pregnancy, less active for about a year, which means that all her natural activities are seriously reduced until she delivers her baby. When she delivers her baby or has a miscarriage, she suffers puerperium, a condition attendant on delivery or miscarriage. As man does not get pregnant, he is not liable to the conditions which women, being female, suffer. Afterwards a woman may breast-feed the baby she bore. Breast-feeding continues for about two years. Breastfeeding means that a woman is so inseparable from her baby that her activity is seriously reduced. She becomes directly responsible for another person whom she assists in his or her biological functions; without this assistance that person would die. The man, on the other hand, neither conceives nor breast-feeds. End of gynaecological statement!

Who knew??!!

However, in case you wondered whether he was just a rather odd tyrant, then consider he would ban adoption or fostering, so that such children can be reared by the state:

As for children who have neither family nor shelter, society is their guardian, and only for them, should society establish nurseries and related institutions. It is better for them to be taken care of by society rather than by individuals who are not their parents. 

Society indeed!

Master of tautology he is, with gems like:  "The living creature is a being who inevitably lives until it is dead." 

He wouldn't have liked Helen Clark:

The woman who rejects pregnancy, marriage, beautification and femininity for reasons of health abandons her natural role in life under these coercive conditions of ill health. The woman who rejects marriage, pregnancy or motherhood because of work abandons her natural role under similar coercive conditions. The woman who rejects marriage, pregnancy or maternity without any concrete cause abandons her natural role as a result of a coercive and morally deviant circumstances.  

He goes on about women being equal, although then says:   It is equally unjust and dictatorial for women to find themselves under the working conditions of men. 

Apparently, he thinks they should get easier conditions.

His view on race leave me speechless with its random nonsense:  

 In addition, the inevitable cycle of social history, which includes the Yellow people's domination of the world when it marched from Asia, and the White people's carrying out a wide-ranging colonialist movement covering all the continents of the world, is now giving way to the re-emergence of Black people.  Black people are now in a very backward social situation, but such backwardness works to bring about their numerical superiority because their low standard of living has shielded them from methods of birth control and family planning. Also, their old social traditions place no limit on marriages, leading to their accelerated growth. The population of other races has decreased because of birth control, restrictions on marriage, and constant occupation in work, unlike the Blacks, who tend to be less obsessive about work in a climate which is continuously hot.

 

Education seems peculiarly libertarian, unlike reality in Libya:

State-controlled and standardized education is, in fact, a forced stultification of the masses. All governments which set courses of education in terms of formal curricula and force people to learn those courses coerce their citizens. All methods of education prevailing in the world should be destroyed through a universal cultural revolution that frees the human mind from curricula of fanaticism which dictate a process of deliberate distortion of man's tastes, conceptual ability and mentality.  

He argues for free schools with the widest choice of learning.  Something Libya doesn't exactly have by any stretch of the imagination.

  

Funny for a police state to be based on:

"Ignorance will come to an end when everything is presented as it actually is and when knowledge about everything is available to each person in the manner that suits him or her."

Shutting down the internet and mobile phone networks is consistent with that apparently.

He thinks sport shouldn't have spectators only participants:

When the masses march and play sport in the centre of playing fields and open spaces, stadiums will be vacant and become redundant. This will take place when the masses become aware of the fact; that sport is a public activity which must be practised rather than watched. This is more reasonable as an alternative than the present costum of a helpless apathetic majority that merely watches.

Grandstands will disappear because no one will be there to occupy them. Those who are unable to perform the roles of heroism in life, who are ignorant of the events of history; who fall short of envisaging the future, and who are not serious enough in their own lives, are the trivial people who fill the seats of the theatres and cinemas to watch the events of life in order to learn their course. They are like pupils who occupy school desks because they are uneducated and also initially illiterate.

Nurse!! Nurse?? Get his pills!

Libya has no official opposition of any kind, Gaddafi is murdering protestors again and again.  Protestors have appeared, bravely, outside the Libyan Embassy in London (brave given how Libya once started shooting from its embassy some years ago, murdering a policewoman).  

Good luck to them, Gaddafi is the Arab ruler who has most exported murder and death of any of those currently in power.  He deserves at the very least, a bullet.

Libya is different

Following on from Egypt, the protests in multiple other Middle Eastern countries demonstrate one simple point - politicians with absolute power corrupt absolutely.  Algeria and Yemen have long been wracked by insurgency and civil conflict, with dictatorial regimes challenged primarily by Islamists in both cases.  Algeria had a brutal bloody civil war following the election of Islamists in the early 1990s, but today, especially for a country with ample oil and gas reserves, life is fairly bleak there.   Yemen has not got the same resources, but it has become a base for a branch of Al Qaeda and has gotten progressively more dangerous in recent years.

In both cases there is a real risk that organised Islamists will take over.  Algeria is too close to Europe for comfort, whereas Yemen's location adjacent to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden could hamper shipping in a strategic location.   However, both have been somewhat failed states since independence, run by either militarist or Marxist strongmen again and again, swinging back and forth between Western and non-Western supporters.

Bahrain is different, as an oil rich absolute monarchy with sectarian issues, it is a surprise that would send shocks through its autocratic neighbours.  Simply being a benevolent dictator dishing out the proceeds of being part of an oil cartel may not be enough anymore. 

Yet Libya is another story altogether.  Gaddafi has been a totalitarian dictator for over 41 years.  He runs a personality cult that has parallels with those in North Korea.  There is no semblance of freedom of speech, open political discourse or democracy in Libya.  He had published his own special political thoughts in the "Green Book" equivalent to Mao's "Little Red Book", in which he rejects liberal democracy and embraces socialism and "people's committees".

Gaddafi is an accomplished murderer and oppressor, he expelled the small Italian community shortly after gaining power.  He imposed an Islamic legal framework, banning alcohol and putting himself up as an authentic Muslim.  His police state includes thousands of informers, his family share in the abundant wealth he has taken for them, and live essentially outside the law.  Not quite Saddam Hussein's sons, but not that far removed.

Some of his achievements:

- Sending hit-squads to assassinate political opponents residing in other countries, nine were killed;

- Sent troops to protect Idi Amin's dictatorship from Tanzanian troops that were fighting Amin's attempt to annex part of Tanzania.  Gaddafi gave Idi Amin safe haven after he fled Uganda;

- In 1984, a gunman at the Libyan Embassy in London shot and killed policewoman Yvonne Fletcher as he shot at protestors outside the Embassy.  Ten other people were hit;

- The Chad-Libyan conflict as Gaddafi sought to annex the Aozou Strip.  He failed, but around 8,500 were killed in the war;

- Bombing of UTA Flight 772 in 1989, killing 170 people;

- Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 (Lockerbie), killing 270 people;

- Bombing of a West Berlin discotheque in 1986, killing 3 and injuring 230;

- Supplies of weapons, ammunition and bombs to the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s;

- Weapons and arms training to ETA in the 1970s;

- Weapons and funding for the Moro National Liberation Front (Islamist rebels) in the Philippines in the 1970s;

- Financing for the Black September Movement that murdered 12 at the Munich Olympics in 1972;

- Weapons to Iran after the 1979 revolution saw ties severed with the US and USSR;

- Support for the PLO during its terrorist phase, and subsequent expulsion of 50,000 Palestinians when the PLO started negotiating with Israel;

- 1200 prisoners killed in Abu Salim prison in 1996.

He thinks a lot of himself saying "I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam (leader) of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level." at an Arab League summit in 2009. 

So he is quite a piece of work.  Whilst Libya has liberalised moderately in recent years, largely due to access to the internet being allowed, it is still one of the most oppressive states in the Arab world.   No organisations are permitted that are not state authorised.  Political parties are banned.  The media is severely restricted, with journalists prosecuted for criticising the regime.   

If Libyans can overthrow this murdering thug then good luck to them, it can only be a good thing, but it will be especially hard.  It is perhaps only more difficult to overthrow the Saudi autocracy or Syria's one party police state.

Though I have noticed a distinct lack of leftwing commentary cheering on those seeking to overthrow Gaddafi, who makes Mubarak look like an angel.  Maybe because too many of them miss the days when this mad anti-American thug would fund and arm them?   Bearing in mind that a handful of Maori nationalist thugs once visited Tripoli to learn about revolution - not that the New Zealand media at all holds people to account for having sympathies with murdering leftwing dictatorships.

Gaddafi is now using snipers to take down protestors and has thugs storming homes of suspected dissidents according to the Daily Telegraph.  One report goes:

"The soldiers are vicious killers. People are so terrified of them that they've been doing everything possible to get away.  Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned.
Fatih, 26, another Benghazi resident, said: "A lot of the thugs he's employing are not Arabic speakers. They're armed to the teeth and only use live ammunition. They don't ask questions – they just shoot. Buildings and cars have been set on fire here, and the situation is getting worse. The dead and injured are everywhere."

Nice.  However, am I wrong in thinking how remarkably quiet the left in the West is about Libya, simply because Gaddafi can't by any sane stretch of the imagination be seen as the result of Western interference?