Did the West Engineer the Fall of Gaddafi?

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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May 15, 2025, 1:05:39 PMMay 15
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I keep coming across claims that the West engineered the fall of Libya's Gaddafi but I recall things differently.

My own memory is that Gaddafi was a victim of his own stubbornness in his determination to spend his life as a dictator in Libya.

The Arab Spring was brewing, ignited by the self immolation of Muhammad Boazizi in Algeria over govt oppression.

Mubarak in Egypt tried to use the army against protesters.

The army eventually refused. Mubarak stepped down.

One or two other Arab/North African leaders did the same thing.

Saudi Arabia responded by bribing its own people with cash gifts to forestall demonstrations possibly demanding democratic rule and it worked.

The demonstrations reached Libya.

The demonstrators wanted a democratic govt.

Gaddafi had spent decades on the throne and seemed set to create a dynastic succession. 

He fought the demonstrators and civil war broke out.

There was no evidence of Western involvement to the best of my knowledge.

The West became involved when the tide turned against the rebels and Gaddafi was matching towards their last stronghold when the West struck, leading Gaddafi to take refuge in a safe house, from where he tried to escape upon which a Western fighter plane took out the vehicle he was escaping in upon which the Libyan rebels set upon him.

I see Gaddafi as incorrectly reading the tides of history against his own interests and that of his country.

Thanks 
Toyin 

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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May 18, 2025, 8:43:17 AMMay 18
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You may find the following article useful in your deliberations:

Jemima Kiss. "M16 whistleblower's partner accuses intelligence agencies of moral slide"
The Guardian. Fri. 24 Oct 2014.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
Chief Editor- Africa Update: https://sites.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries: www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award,  New York African Studies Association
Founding Co -Chair, Sengbe Pieh AMISTAD Committee
Founding Coordinator, African Studies, CCSU
 


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Cornelius Hamelberg

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May 19, 2025, 12:06:21 AMMay 19
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,


Concerning the murder of Colonel Gaddafi, indeed, sitting in relative safety over there in Nigeria or at Cambridge, in Merry England, or wherever it was that you were at those moments, it is understandable and no surprise at all, that you may as you say .” recall things differently”


I also listened live and direct to Saif Al-Islam broadcast to the rebels at Benghazi on the evening of  20th February 2011 on Al Jazeera


I continued to follow the news as  - with Hillary Clinton in the saddle NATO swung into force overnight, to declare a no-fly zone over Libya… on that fateful night…

Cornelius Hamelberg

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May 19, 2025, 12:06:48 AMMay 19
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, 


I take it as for granted that you have digested Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali’s reference 

MI6 whistleblower's partner accuses intelligence agencies of 'moral slide


Given the significant role that Muammar Gaddafi played in Continental Africa and beyond ( he was crowned King of Kings in Accra, Ghana, and further afield I well remember that he invited Israel to join the Arab League  - quite a radical invitation that must have pissed off  some of the Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Military Leaders and general populations, the Arab Streets of The Arab League . Maybe, lurking at the back of his strategic mind, was the old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them”, whilst at the same time he was floating, or rather, dangling the idea of a bi-national state in front of them, a bi-national state to be known as Isratin. I suppose the “ if you can’t beat them,join them” ethos is a natural precursor to the Abraham Accords promising peace, tranquillity and prosperity for everybody.  


It’s surprising that your post has not elicited any vehemence from Colonel Gaddafi’s faithful fans or any serious responses from the munafiqeen , the idiots, the idolaters ( the mushrikeen ) and some of the other hypocrites.


BTW, The only thing that I’ve ever held against the great man is that  - according to a trusted Jewish friend from Libya, as part of his development plan for Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi constructed a main highway that cut right through the main Jewish Cemetery in Tripoli  - and - have a heart, you’ve surely heard people weeping that they do not allow even the dead to rest in peace in their graves and that it’s a favourite pastime of some of the anti-Semites to vandalize the graves in Jewish cemeteries - .   Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) - Chapter 31 - the whole chapter is instructive about this and other adjacent matters 


At this point I only want to point out an error that you must have overlooked when you wrote, 


The Arab Spring was brewing, ignited by the self immolation of Muhammad Boazizi in Algeria over govt oppression.”


The fact is that Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia  -the most Europeanized of the North African countries. 


It’s also important to make the distinctions between Morocco and Algeria 

N.B. Algeria - France relations are at a bottom low just now….


In my view Barack Obama kick-started the Arab Spring with his address to the Arab World from the podium at Cairo University 




On Thursday, 15 May 2025 at 19:05:39 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:

Victor Okafor

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May 19, 2025, 2:06:22 PMMay 19
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One of the pitfalls of African scholarship, historically and contemporaneously, is how erudite some of us can be when it comes to echoing the narrative of the Oppressor, which, of course, makes us sound scholarly to the ears of the oppressor. Too many of us are caught in the trap of Eurocentric lenses for not only viewing ourselves and our possibilities but also for viewing world affairs. In respect of African descendants, in his classic The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois framed this phenomenon as a case of double-consciousness: "a peculiar sensation, ... this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of the others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in bemused contempt and pity." For the continental African, I submit that we too suffer from a subconscious double-consciousness arising from our legacy of colonialism, which, as you know, sought to remake Africa in the image of Europe. How many of the universities in Africa are still steeped in this Eurocentric epistemological framework in the social sciences and the humanities? But did the colonial project reproduce Europe or a caricature of it? To transcend that subconscious double-consciousness, we must recognize, confront, and methodically replace it with African-centered consciousness. It is a process; it does not happen overnight by mere wishful thinking. But we have to be humble enough to acknowledge that it exists.

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Sincerely,

Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Food for Thought

I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by  the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior,  and his [or her] intentions." -- Malcolm X.



Cornelius Hamelberg

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May 19, 2025, 6:30:31 PMMay 19
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A few  matters arising from what was mentioned earlier:


Just as Nigeria is not Zimbabwe, Ghana or Burkina Faso, so too Algeria (God forbid) is not Tunisia, or Morocco. Each North African country is proudly assertive of its national identity, often chauvinistically so. During my two-week holiday in Morocco some years ago, one thing I learned is that you don't ask a Moroccan,"Are you Arab or Berber?” 


My impression is that Jews are more influential in Morocco than in Algeria where they were given the option of becoming Algerian citizens but on the whole chose to be French instead. 


Back in time there’s a fascinating history of Judaised Berbers


Ages ago I had a very religious Black Arab Libyan friend,  Mahmud, an Algerian-Irish friend once lived with me, later on a Moroccan family. I know and have met hundreds of North Africans -from Mauritania to Egypt and not even the slightest problem except - a Moroccan who liked to joke about “ Israeleone”- and an Egyptian who I once told to say “ InshAllah” when making promises about the future. He got very angry and asked me, “ You want to teach ME Arabic?” On the other hand my brother says that if a Muslim owes you any money and says “InshAllah”, it means that he does not intend to pay you back…   


Gaddafi inviting Israel to join the Arab League and Israel’s probable reaction to such a radical suggestion is easy to anticipate and understand if just for a moment we take time out to remember the ire, the opposition, and the hostility towards some members of the African Union who were toying with what they thought was a preposterous proposal that Israel should be granted observer status to attend African Union Summits,


The majority instinct was Hell No ! Or as the Scot would shout, "Not bloody likely!” 


I suppose that at heart the RSVP would be treated with either levity or disdain , since to begin with, diplomatically speaking Israeli membership of the Arab League would be a contravention of the declared aims and purposes of the League ,mainly to promote Arab interests. On their own behalf they’ll probably say that they are our cousins,”the children of Abraham.” 


I can well imagine Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Pan-Arabism disciples, the Nasserites foaming at the mouth and with fire flaring from their nostrils, at the faintest whiff of such an absurd suggestion. And maybe even the gallows for whichever Kafirun made such a treacherous, un-Islamic suggestion, especially at this historic time when Pan-Arabism and the Arab Street are witnessing the mass-slaughter and ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Balk  - and War Criminal Netanyahu’s latest announcement that he intends Israeli military control of all of Gaza, and “all of Gaza” of course would include the tich oil and gas deposits off the Coast of Gaza.


Imagine profound objections coming from some of the most rabbinic rabbis such as the late great Ovadia Yosef beating their chests that they are Jews, not “Ishmaelites” possibly even preaching about “mixed fibres” 

Dr. Oohay

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May 20, 2025, 10:57:47 AMMay 20
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No fundamental difference between Dubois’ framing and Marx’s framing of the perennial issues involving the management of the economy of any micro or macro society of humans and associated natural resources; both perspectives rely relentlessly on the ism-based global governance model; in other words, both “externalize” the sources” of their “infrastructure” problems by pointing at the oppressor or the “other” consciousness; they turn sociology into psycho-sociological/psychiatric cultural phenomena. 

Sisters and brothers of the world, the old either-or logic of the geopolitical “worlds” of BRICS and NATO no longer works. Arguably,  PanAfricanISM has NEVER worked. It lacks ITS OWN “superpower” to engage effectively in any HIGH stake geo-political CHESS or Omaha poker game. Dear sisters and brothers. International geo-politics AIN’T checkers.

All squares are rectangles, BUT all rectangles AIN’T squares. Orwellian language always surfaces: Ll animals are equal, BUT some are more equal than others; this is all ye need to know. The German strategical thinker put it bluntly and succinctly, war = politics by other means; the bloodiest year in recorded (human) history attests to this unfortunate fact.

Oohay

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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May 20, 2025, 4:34:00 PMMay 20
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People’s Planet

Stockholm

20th May , 2025 


Dear Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti has said it all here in one word “Zombie


Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go (zombie)

Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop (zombie)

Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn (zombie)

Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (zombie)”


Cash is king ? 


With Artificial Intelligence on the horizon 

and with “man the measure of all things

either in your cradle or in our grave

sooner or later

we will all have to believe

Knowledge

is king & queen

Cornelius & Cleopatra 

Dr Oohay & Chidi the opera singer

the genie and the other thing

according to 1 Corinthians 13

we shall have to believe

that thought has no race

is not racial

is humble

has not fame or shame 

and that knowledge

even epistemology has wings 

has many colours

rejoices with the truth

just ask Ojogbon 

at least, that's the residual impression

that I got a few decades ago after reading 

In My Father’s House” by Kwame Anthony Appiah

and discussing some of that grey matter over tea &

biscuits with one Bedu Annan.


Professor Victor Okafor’s prescriptive mentality,

His awesome mission to the House Negroes and Uncle Toms of Africa, 

is much appreciated, just as Professor Griff and Jeru the Damaja also rapped,

 “Sent to earth to educate the fool


Dr. Bedford Nwabueze Umez expended a lot of mental energy on  “the African Mind  and Inferiority complex" trying to de-programme and get a lot of the errant children of Africa to reset,  unpack and un-learn a lot of the baggage they are carrying, mostly unwittingly foisted upon them by their education/miseducation. True to the African oral tradition and with a little help from modern technology, here was Dr. Beford Umez in person - (Just imagine if back in the day we had had the blessings of modern technology, then non-stop Pastor Adeboye and his flock would have been watching, in living colour, the recorded history of Jesus preaching his “Sermon on the Mount”, Jesus performing miracles , Jesus walking on water, Jesus breaking bread and drinking wine at the Last Supper,  Jesus crucified, his death, burial, resurrection and glorious ascension - and then the faithful wouldn’t have to believe because they would know what they had seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears and confirmed in their own hearts. 



Ghanaians who lived in Libya for many years have told me about the universal problem of racism which they encountered there, during the Gaddafi era 


Since the demise of Gaddafi, racism towards Black Africans has become a lot worse


I asked some of the Ghanaian Brethren , “But you are Muslims?” 


They replied, “ It doesn't matter, to them, once you’re Black. Even the Black Libyan Muslims discriminate against their Ghanaian Muslim Brothers.”


No wonder Jerry Rawlings chartered a plane to bring them back home to Ghana ,the Black Star Nation.


Fast forward :  Libya: Slave Market. Black Africans auctioned as slaves

 

What was the Pan-African reaction? 

Was there any ACTION?

Was there lots of Academic babble about REPARATIONS ?


I asked my Ghanaian Muslim Brethren who were formerly guests in Libya, well what do you have to say about those on the other side, in Benghazi? They answered uniformly, “ Those guys are all really Egyptians! They’re from Egypt. End of story.


Have to start thinking African , yes. Like Dr O.


But some of these great thinkers, are they not already compromised by language? 

Isn’t Ojogbon’s oeuvre mostly in English? 

In that respect how is he different from 

You and me ,and how are we different from

the snake oil salesman Trump

and Big Grammar Kperogi

and Chief Chicken Feathers 

like Napoleon in rags 

defecating and self-celebrating 

as the purveyor of shit poetry ?


Ignoramus would like to know  

Victor Okafor

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May 20, 2025, 7:18:53 PMMay 20
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