Today on "Classic Depravities of the Internet": The death of Muammar Gaddafi
Time for Jonah to take a crash course on 45 years in Libya's history real fast, brb.
I remember this. I remember seeing the images when this happened. But as an ignorant American fuck, I'm not super aware of who Gaddafi is and what he did to deserve being mobbed to death.
let's find out together.
WARNING: the man was a brutal dictator who wholesale sponsored terrorism. crimes against humanity inbound. Mass assaults and p3dophilia are rumored to have taken place too.
THE DEATH OF MUAMMAR GADDAFI
(GRAPHIC) The moment Gaddafi is killed:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xludhc
Timelines "Colonel Gaddafi: Terror of the Middle East":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmTAkE0DT_M
Biographics "Muammar Gaddafi: The Mad Dog of the Middle East":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T_XPWoAJrs
NewAfrica "A Brief History of Muammar Gaddafi":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1NkZn5P8UA
The Guardian "Gaddafi's last words as he begged for mercy: 'What did I do to you?'":
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/23/gaddafi-last-words-begged-mercy
BBC "The Muammar Gaddafi story":
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12688033
The two part documentary "Mad Dog: Inside the secret world of Muammar Gaddafi":
pt. 1: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1bytzx
pt. 2: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1byzry
Vice News "Libya's revolution is in ruins":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrKWeGNCQzQ
CONTEXT:
"They love me, my people. All my people. They would DIE to protect me."
-General Muammar Gaddafi
This was his final interview before those very same people, who "loved" him" and would "die to protect" him, would bash his face in with the back of a gun and murder him, putting an end to his brutal 42 years as the dictator of Libya.
Muammar Gaddafi is one of those political leaders that was brutally demonized here in the west. Apparently, there was a point in time where America called him the most dangerous man in the world. To me, he had been in the same basic ballpark as Saddam Hussein, someone who sponsored terror from a comfy chair. But then again, when the Arab Spring was happening and Gaddafi was caught, I was barely paying attention. I really had no idea who this guy was before this post.
HOO BOY.
From his humble beginnings and his peaceful rise to power in the 60s, to mass sponsoring terror on a global scale and being responsible for some of the most infamous attacks in the modern era, to the erratic and bizarre thought processes he forced onto his people, Gaddafi's was a regime of violent ups and downs. We find ourselves in the strange position of speculating how much the West's influence on Gaddafi's death has contributed to the instability of the country today.
Gaddafi HAD to go, but there were no winners.
"His rule saw him go from revolutionary hero to international pariah, to valued strategic partner and back to pariah again.
Gaddafi developed his own political philosophy, writing a book so influential - in the eyes of its author, at least - that it eclipsed anything dreamt up by Plato, Locke or Marx. He made countless show-stopping appearances at Arab and international gatherings, standing out not just with his outlandish clothing, but also his blunt speeches and unconventional behaviour.
He spent his life reinventing himself and his revolution: one Arab commentator called him the "Picasso of Middle East politics", although instead of Blue, Rose or Cubist periods, he had his pan-Arab period, his Islamist period, his pan-African period, and so on.
But even Gaddafi was not able to withstand the tide of popular feeling that had already swept away his two authoritarian neighbours in a momentous year for the Arab world."
-BBC
We start our story all the way back in 1969 with a 28 year old young man from an impoverished region of Libya.
Muammar Gaddafi had been born in 1942, on a date we don't know due to the humbleness of his beginnings. He had been born into what is called the Bedouins, a collection of nomadic tribes who lived on the fringes of Libyan society in the 60s. Most of them had no means of education, and with a government as corrupt as the one oversaw by King Idris, the deeply unpopular leader seen as too "western", the Bedouins were as low on the totem pole as you got. This pissed the young Gaddafi off a LOT, as the youngster was already showing signs of political activism in high school. His idol and biggest hero was the leader of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he would frequently memorize his speeches and political writings. Nasser's appeal was the idea of a "pan-Arabic nation", or bringing all Arab nations under one banner and nationality to form a world power to rival the capitalist dogs of America and Great Britain, and this became one of Gaddafi's rallying cries on his rise to power. he joined the Royal Military Academy in Benghazi in 1963, and it's here that his earlier rumblings of revolution would explode. for years leading up to '69, he would silently begin gathering friends and colleagues who opposed King Idris and began planning their brutal takeover.
Except.....it wasn't brutal. At all. King Idris left the country for medical attention, and Gaddafi just....walked right in. The royal guard gave up, and not a single bullet was fired. Gaddafi had taken control of Libya without spilling any blood.
"People of Libya! In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your most incessant demands for change and regeneration, and your longing to strive towards these ends: listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all. At a single blow our gallant army has toppled these idols and has destroyed their images. By a single stroke it has lightened the long dark night in which the Turkish domination was followed first by Italian rule, then by this reactionary and decadent regime which was no more than a hotbed of extortion, faction, treachery and treason."
-Gaddafi's first radio broadcast to his people
At first, things seemed to be going okay.
Gaddafi expelled the remnants of Italian occupation, and set about redistributing the wealth Libya had accrued from its oil sales to better serve the people. He was a big fan of socialism, and insisted that the poor be taken care of, no doubt remembering his own impoverished upbringing. Literacy in Libya spiked, as infant mortality rates went down. Libya became one of the only oil-rich countries in the world to have complete control over its own oil supply.
And sadly, this is as fas as his good accomplishments go. If he had stayed right here, he would've been remembered as a decent leader.
One of the big things with dictators like this is the constant fear that they'll be assassinated, so what often happens is that anyone who dares to speak against them will just "disappear" or be made an example of. Gaddafi was the maestro of this, having flown CIA members into Libya under false pretenses in order to train his secret militia, a motion that the CIA never stopped or punished Gaddafi for. According to the CIA who went, they thought it was a mission to get close to him. People would be grabbed off the streets and transported to political prisons to be tortured and murdered, something that REALLY reminds me of Hussein. Anyone and everyone who engaged with the west was a traitor to their country, and there is at least one broadcast that made it to Youtube of them putting a student to death in public for the crimes of studying abroad in America. Sadiq Hamed Shwehdi had been an aeronautical engineer when he was executed in 1984 in front of a crowd, that included a TON of elementary school children, and was condemned to hang. When his neck didn't snap, a woman named Huda from the crowd darted forward and tugged on his feet, killing the man.
Gaddafi made her one of the most powerful women in Libya, giving her the nickname "Huda the executioner."
A lot of this came from his own philosophy on ruling, his "Green Book" that he considered to be as important as Mein Kampf with direct inspiration taken from Chairman Mao's "Red Book". HE considered it, no one else did, because the thing reads like the ramblings of a madman. By now, it was becoming apparent that his "Mad Dog" titled wasn't just for military prowess, the man had screws loose upstairs. The book espouses his beliefs in the evils of communism, capitalism, and democracy, as well as set up how he believed all of Africa, not just Libya, should be governed. All it really did was establish their "brother leader" as the supreme head of the country and took away any sort of power from local governments. It's a random mishmash of philosophies that clash together in a way that doesn't make sense, but that was Gaddafi in a nutshell.
And kids were forced to read this, then pledge allegiance to his picture.
"So the long-suffering Libyan masses were dragooned into attending popular congresses vested with no power, authority or budgets, with the knowledge that anyone who spoke out of turn and criticised the regime could be carted off to prison. A set of draconian laws was enacted in the name of upholding security, further undermining the colonel's claim to a champion of freedom from oppression and dictatorship.
Legal penalties included collective punishment, death for anyone who spread theories aiming to change the constitution and life imprisonment for disseminating information that tarnished the country's reputation.
Tales abounded of torture, lengthy jail terms without a fair trial, executions and disappearances. Many of Libya's most educated and qualified citizens chose exile, rather than pay lip service to the lunacy."
-BBC
He had a political rival murdered, and kept his severed head in a freezer for 25 years so he could come down and look at it. That wasn't the only body he had down there.
Gaddafi's biggest and most infamous legacy, without question, is his sponsorship and fostering of terrorism across the world. I'm sorry, "political under dogs", he called them, as it didn't matter what their cause was, if you were a small group fighting a bigger group this would get you on his radar. He supplied weapons and money to the Irish Republican Army when they did their bombing attacks in the 80s, he was directly behind the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 massacre that killed 257 people over the Scottish town of Lockabee, and he championed and supported the Palestinian terrorists Black September when they took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage during the Munich Olympics. Time after time after time, the explosives used in terror attacks were linked back to Libya, and to Gaddafi's money. He even flew one of his arms dealers into Libya to renew his vows, and had the Catholic church in Tripoli ring its bells for the first time since the start of his regime. This particular person is rumored to have taken an arms deal from him worth over $350 million USD.
Back at home, though, there were even darker things brewing. Apparently, Gaddafi's sexual appetite was as broken as the rest of him. He was very famous for his "Amazonian guard", his women bodyguards who accompanied him everywhere. They were a glorified harem, and Gaddafi would often cajole and beg them to take part in drug-fueled orgies with him or "lend" them out to his officers. More upsetting is the idea that he would regularly go around to schools and "pick out" young children for him to assault without mercy, and according to at least one of the documentaries I watched, he could be one of the world's most prolific serial r*pists. Which is fun. But this is a point of controversy that's been disputed by other claims, so I'm not entirely sure what to make of this one. Since my faith in humanity is in the negative digits, it wouldn't surprise me.
"Victims and witnesses state in the documentary that Gadhafi would choose his targets on visits to schools or colleges, patting on the head those who caught his eye.
His security officials would then take the victim to one of several specially designed suites of rooms, where they would be abused and raped by the dictator. In one such suite at Tripoli University, there is a fully-equipped gynecological examination room, where victims were tested for sexually transmitted diseases before being sexually abused.
"Some were only 14," recalled one teacher at a Tripoli school. "They would simply take the girl they wanted. They had no conscience, no morals, not an iota of mercy, even though she was a mere child." Some of the girls were held for years, while others were dumped with appalling injuries.
"One just disappeared and they never found her again, despite her father and brothers searching for her. Another was found three months later, cut, r*ped and lying in the middle of a park. She had been left for dead."
-Haaretz
When the Pan-Arab nation idea fell through, he began championing a Pan-Africa. He had great aspirations of leading the entire nation, but by the 90s, no one wanted anything to do with him.
Except two very important, very famous Africans. One was famous for being just as monstrous and murderous as Gaddafi, and the other one......was Nelson fucking Mandela. Color me shocked to learn that Mandela had been such a good friend of Gaddafi at one point, that he has a grandson NAMED for Gaddafi. See, remember how he supported literally any smaller group fighting against big odds? well guess what apartheid was. Gaddafi had immediately seized on Mandela's struggles as a political prisoner in South Africa and, as he hated the Western influence and colonization of Africa anyway, dumped a huge amount of support for Mandela. He had Mandela flown to Libya as a guest of honor after his release from prison, and they remained friends until Gaddafi's death. When asked why he would stay friends with someone who had committed so many crimes against humanity, Mandela said that “The enemies of countries in the West are not ours.” Which is...... man. History can be hard to study sometimes. I do NOT know how to feel about this.
Fortunately, I know EXACTLY how to feel about Ugandan's infamous Last King of Scotland Idi Amin, as he was the other leader who was actually friends with Gaddafi. The man wholesale slaughtered half a million of his own people, it's no wonder the two were pen pals.
We could be here forever pouring over every little thing Gaddafi did. That's the trouble with posts like this, I can never hope to even come close to doing the entirety of the history justice. In lieu of this, I have linked to several documentaries about Gaddafi if you wish to learn more. Instead, let us jump ahead to the main event in today's topic: the bloody downfall and video evidence of Gaddafi's execution.
It came as a massive shock to the West when, after the devastating 9/11 attacks, Gaddafi came out in OPPOSITION to Bin Laden and Al-Qaida. Whether he wanted to try playing nice for once or had more nefarious goals, I have no idea, but he was essentially "neutered" by the Bush regime when, in 2003, he agreed to get rid of all WMDs, or weapons of mass destruction, in exchange for a lifting on all those trade embargoes he accrued over the decades. Spoiler alert, he didn't have WMDs to get rid of. But he WAS able to sell secrets and intel on Al-Qaida movement, so as we so often fucking do, the USA and Britain decided to play ball with the dictator and started inviting him to the cool kid's table. Let's just ignore the mountains of bodies, AMERICAN BODIES, this man has piled up. Libya has oil, we want that oil and the dangerous dictator is actually talking to us, let's milk this partnership dry for all its worth.
And the second Gaddafi no longer mattered, we funded the people who killed him.
Sorry, I'm getting heated and have to go on a side rant for a sec. Why do we do this every single FUCKING time? What is wrong with us? Why do thousands and thousands of innocent lives get played for bargaining chips so damn often? Don't get me wrong, Gaddafi HAD to get out. What he was doing was heinous. But it's only when he became inconvenient for Western countries that it became our problem and we just HAD to step in to save those poor people, don't you know? I hate that so fucking much.
By 2011 though, it no longer mattered. The Arab Spring had arrived.
"The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and economic stagnation. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh) or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is "ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām", or 'the people want to bring down the regime'."
-wiki
I remember watching the Egyptian protests of this. At the time, I was in Chicago and DEEP into my political activism, so I was rooting for the protestors.
February 17th, 2011. The Abu Salim prison massacre was one of Gaddafi's more serious offenses, and when Arab Spring arrived, there were daily protests in Benghazi for Gaddafi's removal. This time, Gaddafi would respond by ordering his army to open fire on the protestors, which sparked the flame of revolution in earnest. The Libyan people were sick and tired of Gaddafi, but were at first completely outmatched in terms of firepower. Gaddafi, convinced the rebels were under the hypnotic control of hallucinogens and Western brainwashing, promised to run the streets red with the blood of every rebel who dared to oppose him. Several of his most senior ranking officers would resign or defect, going straight to Europe and telling everyone what was happening. This is where NATO stepped in and escalated this whole thing to the next level, because on March 23rd, a no-fly zone was put up over Libya and an arms embargo was instated. Cut off from the world and now completely alone, Gaddafi was soon on the run, going from town to town seeking refuge and trying to outrun the very people he claimed loved him. He was their brother leader, how could they be doing this? All allies he thought he had in the USA and England turned their backs, and Gaddafi would eventually find himself back in the very village where his life began.
But even here wasn't safe. The people's army found him, and with help from a NATO air strike, Gaddafi's convoy comes crashing down. Not defeated even in this, Gaddafi crawls his way into a nearby sewer pipe. Ironically, he has ended up in the same humiliating position as Suddam Hussein before him, dirty and frightened in a hole in the ground as death closes in.
This is where the video comes in, and why I marked this as gore.
The footage is grainy and shaky, caught in the chaos of war. A brutally beaten Muammar Gaddafi is dragged off a truck by half a dozen well armed men, bleeding heavily from the side of his face and looking like a caged rabbit. Apparently, he is screaming "why are you doing this, my sons?", "this is a sin for you", and begging for mercy, an irony I can taste from here. Eventually, he is dragged onto the hood of the truck and swarmed, as the cameraman struggles to get in there. We can't really see what's happening except for the blows being thrown. A man holds a shoe over Gaddafi's broken nose.
Eventually, someone shoots the bastard in his intestines. His body would be paraded through the streets of Benghazi, as millions flocked to see for themselves that the Mad Dog was finally, mercifully dead.
The brutal regime of Muammar Gaddafi was finally over.
"It is the longest of these fragments of a death – a jerky three minutes and more shot by fighter Ali Algadi on his iPhone and acquired by a website, the Global Post – that describes those moments in the most detail. A dazed and confused Gaddafi is led from the drain where he was captured, bleeding heavily from a deep wound on the left side of his head, from his arm, and, apparently, from other injuries to his neck and torso, staining his tunic red with blood. He is next seen on the ground, surrounded by men with weapons shouting “God is great” and firing in the air, before being lifted on to a pickup truck as men around him shout that the ruler for more than four decades should be “kept alive”.
There are other clips that complete much of the story: Gaddafi slumped on a pickup truck, face smeared with blood, apparently unconscious; Gaddafi shirtless and bloody on the ground surrounded by a mob; Gaddafi dead in the back of an ambulance. What is not there is the moment of his death – and how it happened – amid claims that he was killed by fighters with a shot to the head or stomach. By Friday, the day after he died, the body of the former dictator once so feared by his Libyan opponents was facing a final indignity – being stored on the floor of a room-sized freezer in Misrata usually used by restaurants and shops to keep perishable goods."
-The Guardian
But peace didn't come to Libya.
In the wake of Gaddafi, Libya struggled and is still struggling to find its feet. NATO, the USA, and Britain have all but abandoned them to their own devices, leaving all that military equipment in the hands of unsupervised groups which as we're way too well aware, means human trafficking, smuggling, and violence are all rampant. Barack Obama called the handling of Libya after the revolution one of the greatest regrets of his presidency, and.... YEAH. YEAH ACTUALLY. I didn't know about any of this, but yeah way to drop the ball on that one guys.
It had once been the most prosperous country in Egypt. I hope someday it can be again.
