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.
