A Different Perspective of Libya

One of the problems with a mainstream media that often serves as little more than the government's mouthpiece is that citizens frequently don't know as much as they think they do. Take, for example, the country of Libya. Before we decided to bomb them, how many Americans could tell you much about the country?

My guess is that only about one-quarter (at best) would have been able to locate Libya on a world map. Even less people would have known that Tripoli serves as its capitol. As to its standard of living, I bet very few people (including me) would have had a clue.

All most of us might have known is that their leader is a violent lunatic, most of the population is Muslim and that the country serves as a training ground for terrorists. Of course, this is all our elected leaders want us to remember: Libya -- bad Muslim country.

Is this an accurate picture?

Unlike Tunisia or Egypt where a halfway credible argument could be made that the population was suffering from exploding food prices and a vast wealth gap, Gaddafi's Libya, officially called Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, is very different.

There, according to Africans I have spoken to with direct knowledge, Libyans enjoyed the highest living standard on the Continent. Gaddafi did not stay on top for 42 years without ensuring that his population had little room to complain. Most health services, education and fuel was state-subsidized. Gaddafi's Libya had the lowest infant mortality rate and highest life expectancy of all Africa. When he siezed power from ailing King Idris four decades ago literacy was below 10% of the population. Today it is above 90%, hardly the footprint of your typical tyrant. Less than 5% of the population is undernourished, a figure lower than in the United States. In response to the rising food prices of recent months, Gaddafi took care to abolish all taxes on food. And a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. Gaddafi calls his model a form of Islamic socialism. It is secular and not theocratic, despite its overwhelmingly Sunni base in the population.

Why is the United States so opposed to Gadaffi? Clearly because he is simply "not with the program." Gaddafi has shown repeatedly and not without grounds that he deeply distrusts Washington. He has constantly tried to forge an independent voice for an Africa that is increasingly being usurped by the Pentagon's AFRICOM. In 1999 he initiated creation of the African Union, based in Addis Abbaba, to strengthen the international voice of Africa's former colonial states. At a pan-African summit in 2009 he appealed for creation of a United States of Africa to combine the economic strengths of what is perhaps the world's richest continent in terms of unexploited mineral and agricultural potentials...
~ from Creative Destruction: Libya in Washington's Greater Middle East Project by F. William Engdahl ~

Now, Engdahl -- for all I know -- may be nothing more than a Libyan apologist. On the other hand, he may be providing far more accurate information than the mainstream media. In this day and age, it's hard to know. (Since I trust the Global Research website far more than the mainstream talking heads, my assumption is that Engdahl knows what he's talking about.)

Our government realizes that most people don't have the time nor energy to investigate issues on their own and/or to read articles from a wide variety of sources. No, far too many Americans get their news solely from mainstream news organizations and pundits. So, the government feeds them the little bit they want us to know and, unfortunately, a lot of this information is incomplete, distorted or patently untrue.