Odde To Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi

In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.
After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped.

On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer.
On the other side, in the East of the Country, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything.

America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA’s headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.
In 1991 the New York Times reported that Hifter may have been one of “600 Libyan soldiers trained by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills…to fit in neatly into the Reagan Administration’s eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi”.
Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens.

Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital.

Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.
For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.
When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.
A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America’s Military-Industrial-Complex.
Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America’s military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.
NATO’s military intervention may have been a resounding success for America’s military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.

 Read More by Garikai Chengu research scholar at Harvard University

Dr Patrick Ngugi Njoroge - An Independent Mind

INDEPENDENT MIND

“Totally devoid of ego and instinctively averse to self-advertisement” is how a senior Treasury official and long-serving central banker described him.

His style brings to public service a rare quality of humility and an aversion to the trappings of power and opulence.

During vetting Dr Njoroge demonstrated an independent mind, taking a different position to what MPs were pushing and also going against the government position on some issues.

He was, for example, forthright that he considers Kenya’s external borrowing excessive, saying the country must be careful in considering more debt and where the money was going.

This contradicted the National Treasury position, which is that the country’s borrowing is healthy and within the limits.

He also dismissed proposals by MPs to form a government bank to provide cheaper loans and bring interest rates down or simply introduce legislation to control bank lending rates.

“I think it would be a big mistake to even think that we can control interest rates through legislation. It will not work. That is why we moved from price control. Commercial banks just need to get confident to move ahead with market-based solutions that are sensitive for their businesses like control on inflation. This is something we have done in other countries by assuring the banks that the economy is under control, we will come up with a plan that is acceptable to all,” said Dr Njoroge.
 
The man in charge of Kenya’s money has turned down the offer to live in an expansive home in Nairobi’s Muthaiga and ride in a motorcade.

Dr Patrick Ngugi Njoroge, will instead be housed in communal accommodation in Nairobi’s Loresho estate with his fellow members of Opus Dei (Latin for "work of God"), an institution of the Catholic church.

The institution teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. Most of its members are lay people, with secular priests under a bishop.

When he was being vetted by MPs before his appointment by President Uhuru Kenyatta, Dr Njoroge was asked why he does not own property in Kenya and is still single at 54 yet his monthly salary at the International Monetary Fund was Sh3 million a month.

A MATTER OF CHOICE

“Yes I don’t have a single asset here in Kenya and this is where I am at this point and it doesn’t mean that this how it will be forever. I subscribe to being very deliberate about that. This is my economic model and may be years after retirement, I would want to invest in other things. That should not mean I have any financial inabilities. It comes with the profession,” the country’s ninth Central Bank governor said.

Read More

The Nations Poor - Tailgating

The Nations Poor - Tailgating 

It's a hard pill to swallow
When the laws you follow
Are enforced on land your ancestors are wrongfully conquered on
And the very principles this country's founded on 
Can’t be counted on
In times of crisis and confusion.
What an illusion they've pulled off on us
Misused and lost our trust
Too many times but
Ain’t too many rhymes been written about this
So I'm pissed
Cuz for some odd reason
We think it's best the less that is said
But for God's sake people they left us for dead,
Dying.

And there is no denying
Those fathers crying 
With their family's sidewalk written
What was so cleverly hidden 
Is now in plain vision
For all to see
We want you all to see how this country does it's poor and down trotted 
This is an instance that must not be forgotten
It’s for keeps
Long after the media sleeps
Political name calling and lying

Send them photography to desensitize 
The eyes so we won't cry 
No more when we see people dying,
In despair.
We don't care
We just change the station
We live in a nation
Where the poor have nothing but time to spend
So we left waiting…………… Tailgating 

Home no more
Show no more love
Than them countries them white boys take over
This is the real rape over
And this ain't young boy frustrated emotion
This is grown man rationale
Hard to admit my national 
Don’t give a fuck about its own
But the evidence is clear we can stack it up
K- shaka made a statement
heich here to back it up
It's true
We live in a beautiful world where
Ugly souls push the buttons
The gluttons of society
Top priority
Make sure the rich folk stay rich folk

This ain't a new issue
The nations poor been the tissue
That the city's wipes its’ ass with
relief and disaster, corporate kick backs
like how Halliburton is contracted to restore back the order
They use black bodies to hold back the water…..tailgaiting
Such disorder in the country that makes so much money
I'm telling you learn so much money 
When you just open up a book and look inside
That’s where they hide the evidence
These fucked up politicians
And their constituents
Pitch you against your own mind here
Fuck up your mind here yeah
They got opportunities and jobs for the poor
It’s called 'prison life' and 'warfare' 
that's ur share of the national pie
But you gotta lie, steal and cheat to get it,
Step on somebody's feet to get it 
Knock toes that been swollen for so long
They do us so wrong 
But we just stand there and take it
Nature rips the mask off so they can't take it
We stand here butt naked
This is your nation's poor
But you still stand here and ask us for our kids for war,

And for our right to vote
What the fuck can you possibly say to them kids
When they learn that their parents died
Casualties of the war in poverty?

big up Black Ice

This is not a Revolution

All lies and jest
    Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
    And disregards the rest
    —Paul Simon

Darkness descends upon the Arab world. Waste, death, and destruction
attend a fight for a better life. Outsiders compete for influence and
settle accounts. The peaceful demonstrations with which this began,
the lofty values that inspired them, become distant memories.
Elections are festive occasions where political visions are an
afterthought. The only consistent program is religious and is stirred
by the past. A scramble for power is unleashed, without clear rules,
values, or endpoint. It will not stop with regime change or survival.
History does not move forward. It slips sideways.

Games occur within games: battles against autocratic regimes, a
Sunni–Shiite confessional clash, a regional power struggle, a newly
minted cold war. Nations divide, minorities awaken, sensing a chance
to step out of the state’s confining restrictions. The picture is
blurred. These are but fleeting fragments of a landscape still coming
into its own, with only scrappy hints of an ultimate destination. The
changes that are now believed to be essential are liable to be
disregarded as mere anecdotes on an extended journey.

When goals converge, motivations differ. The US cooperated with Gulf
Arab monarchies and sheikhdoms in deposing Qaddafi yesterday and in
opposing Assad today. It says it must be on the right side of history.
Yet those regimes do not respect at home the rights they piously
pursue abroad. Their purpose is neither democracy nor open societies.
They are engaged in a struggle for regional domination. What, other
than treasure, can proponents of a self-styled democratic uprising
find in countries whose own system of governance is anathema to the
democratic project they allegedly promote?

The new system of alliances hinges on too many false assumptions and
masks too many deep incongruities. It is not healthy because it cannot
be real. Something is wrong. Something is unnatural. It cannot end
well.

A video makes the rounds. Nasser regales the crowd with the story of
his encounter with the then head of the Muslim Brotherhood, who asks
him to compel women to be veiled. The Egyptian leader replies: Does
your daughter wear a veil? No. If you can’t control her, how do you
expect me to control tens of millions of Egyptian women? He laughs and
the crowd laughs with him. It is the early 1950s, over half a century
ago. Today, one senses wistfulness for such humor and such bravado.
History does not move forward.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/08/not-revolution/

The annihilation of mental colonization

This is the speech i would love to here a real presidential candidate  would stand and read in a nation as great as this..................................

The annihilation of mental colonization

A new revolution has begun,
Not against the forces of a colonial kingdom
But a rebellion against an oppressor that has risen among us,
It is not a foreign invasion we have to fear,
Rather the threat of a force within our nation
That has usurped what was once a dream of having the greatest democracy ever known to man,
We now live in a world where the population has grown exponentially,
And the planet is running out of resources to sustain us all,
We in the inner-city and those struggling in the suburban ghettos may not realize it yet,
But make no mistake,
The people who control the technology and run every enterprise that makes up our world,
Have seen this coming for a long time,
The ideas of renewable energy,
Global warming,
The idea of collectively working,
Were purposefully bought out, derailed, demonized, or corrupted,
In favor of an economic structure designed by a monetary caste system,
In a desperate attempt to convince us that we need to maintain that extravagant existence,
They've pretended we might share in their dream,
That we can justify any inhumanity in its name,
Out of this blind ignorance was born the curse of slavery,
Many of the founders of this nation were themselves Masons,
That is not a Left wing or Right wing conspiracy theory,
It is a widely known and accepted fact,
So then explain to me how a nation founded by men,
Who not only understood the long and complicated history of Europe,
But also that of Africa,
Could permeate such a lie in convincing the American public,
That one race of men was superior and one inferior,
When in fact we know that all the early men,
The men who created civilization and every aspect of what we see today,
The foundation of all human life,
Were from Africa,
The greatest cowardice of course came not with slavery itself,
Unfortunately,
But with the excuses for slavery,
For if America had been as brave as the Roman Empire and all other empires that have come after her,
And claimed "No, we were just stronger and that's why we took you",
Then when slavery was over racism would've probably followed in suit,
But instead it was the social lie,
The religious lie that was told,
That stayed in the mind of people,
That separated one human being from another,
In order to distract us from the issues of class and freedom,
They created issues around religion and race to dominate the world for centuries to come,
Some claim that they respect that they respect the culture of life in this country,
They cry out for indignity of children that are slaughtered before they are born,
But God has not penetrated their souls,
For they have no empathy,
Nothing in their cold hearts for the 100s of 1,000s of lives we have taken in our wars overseas,
For that which they call "collateral damage",
Which the are the burnt and damaged children of the world,
They have no prayers for them,
Only snide commentary on the internet and laughter in their hearts,
And yet you claim to be one with God,
Huh,
We talk about immigration in this country,
Might doesn't make right ladies and gentleman,
It just makes right now,
What we are saying to the rest of the world,
Is one day when America grows weak,
One day when her legions falter,
On the day when her economy crumbles,
China, Russia, Europe, whatever power has arisen,
All you have to do is come here and conquer us in a few military excursions,
And then you too can set up shop here,
And in 100 years you can tell every red-blooded American,
"No, you are an illegal human being,
I am the true citizen,
I have all the rights,
You have no rights",
Maybe you forgot how you got this country,
Maybe you take for granted the blood, the sweat, the tears,
That the people who live in practical serfdom shed everyday,
For we may not run America, but we make America run,
We talk about the Law,
Yet,
How many indignities have been legal in the past?
How many treaties with Native Americans have we broken?
How many international laws have we violated?
And,
Speaking of laws,
How can a corporation be regulated by a government that is funded and controlled by corporations?
How can there be accountability,
For people who see a profit margin above the lives of Americans?
Above the lives of human beings in other countries?
We have taken the soul out ourselves and placed them inside machines,
My words of course,
Will be marginalized, demonized,
In typical fashion,
Anytime you dare to question the power structure they say you hate America,
No, I love this country,
I see its beauty everyday in its people,
And I love it a lot more than those who have abandoned the American worker,
That have chose to exploit and try to take away benefit she has,
Those that attempt to make excuses for every atrocity committed,
In the name of supposed freedom,
Those who demand accountability from everyone,
But offer none themselves,
Who favor contracts over lives,
Who favor invasion and control over organic democracy overseas,
The greatest flaw that any intelligent person has is to think they're smarter than everyone else………