Pictures of Gaddafi, darling of the West.

Let's not forget the prevailing reality until at least January of this year:

Picked up most of the following at http://akirathedon.com/blobblog/berlusconi-doesnt-want-to-“disturb”-gaddafi.

These are all individual meetings, not run-ins at bigger convos like the UN or G20.










This one's no surprise... but they were neighbors:

(Picture was of Mubarak - doesn't work. Sorry.)





Honesty compels me to add:



So what's the point? Libya was integrated into the capitalist global market. Relations were better than ever.

This wasn't many years ago, this was yesterday. For the last 10 years, Gaddafi was a darling of the West, an ally in the "War on Terror."

Qadaffi re-privatized Libyan oil!

The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and now almost every Arab nation spoiled that.

Kadafee's murderous reaction when the wave arrived in Libya made it impossible to sustain him as an ally.

The Libyan rebels were too sympathetic and skilled with the media (in comparison to, say, Yemen).

Suddenly the US sees an opportunity to get ahead of the Arab uprisings by supporting the fall of the one dictator the oil kingdoms won't mind seeing go.

Remember, the US tried to figure out ways to keep Mubarak until his final days. And while they try to topple Cadafy, they have until this same moment tried to prop up Yemen as it massacres its own protesters.

Humanitarian, democracy: that's not the US motivation in these countries.

A solution is being sought to re-stabilize Libya under a new regime, so that the oil can flow and so that refugees don't start hazarding a passage to Fortress Europe.

Meanwhile, humanitarian disasters (including massacres of civilians by the military) in countless countries produce no such reaction from the West. Those countries don't have oil and aren't across the Med from Europe.

Will this be better for Libyans? A lot of you are willing to risk that it will be, which is a gamble at best. That's no reason to blind yourselves to whom you are supporting.

The nations of this coalition you have been engaged in international crime for centuries. These same states, sometimes alone and sometimes in alliance, once enslaved the rest of the world. They killed millions of Algerians and Vietnamese and Iraqis and so many others. France and the US supported opposite sides as proxies in the Rwandan civil war that culminated in genocide, but the world was later sold on the lie that they didn't intervene to stop it!

Right in to the present decade, always for geostrategic interest alone, and always with some noble excuse.

In the next weeks they'll be cutting the "entitlements" you paid for and keeping the Pentagon budget untouched.

.

That hat! The array of "medals"....

You know, one thing about Gaddafi, he loved to wear costumes. He may be a crazy batshit thug dictator but the guy loved a good costume.

K&R too, for the rest of your excellent OP.

It must be the only army where a Colonel outranks Generals.

I think he dresses up pretty kewl.
Now with that said, I hope one of those missiles 'accidentally' blows up his ass!

by involuntary transfer of cooties.

Who is the sharply-dressed cutie in the first photo, on the right? :evilgrin:

As if things weren't crazy enough!!

She's off limits -- wayyyyy off limits. She's a virgin. And she'd just as soon kill you as look at you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga9c28VD-Yc

I'll have to look that up.

The point being, DON'T FORGET YESTERDAY.

Even if you think the present action is incidentally helping the Libyans (very unlikely!).

Don't let the imperialists sell you on the lies that they act for any reason other than their own gain, as a class and as individual robber-barons, and for their own geostrategic visions that are just as crazy as Gaddafi's.

Because this shit is never going to stop otherwise. The next war will always be coming. No country drops bombs on 40, 50 other countries in about as many years and then gets to claim it's doing anything for humanity!

Ending the empire will save the most lives int he long run.

http://ohuiginn.net/mt/2011/02/eu_libya_arms_press_review.html

EU arms sales to Libya: fleshing out the figures

There's no doubt that European weapons are today being used to kill Libyans.

Journalists across Europe are now fleshing out the details, figuring out whodunnit and how. Here's a summary of what they've found so far...

Start with the official figures: €343 million of weapons sold in 2009 alone. (link to The EU Observer, Deutsche Welle and Der Spiegel summarize those numbers and examine what is behind them. They speculate, for example, that the €43m of German electrical exports includes jamming equipment used to block the mobile phone and GPS networks.

Italy is the biggest exporter: they officially sold Libya €111m of weapons, but are also responsible for €80m of firearms dubiously licensed through Malta. The Corriere della Sera has found a government report detailing the Italian companies involved, which Sky News summarizes in English:

SNIP

It is a summary of data that can be found in quarterly reports of strategic exports by country on the UK foreign office website. It was the almost 800% increase in value of the export licenses for various categories of strategic exports to Libya that caught my attention (27.4m in 2008 to 213m in 2010). I don't have time to see exactly what it means, since each quarterly report has several categories that you must add together, and the export license value means quantities up to that amount may be shipped, not necessarily that the total was shipped.

http://www.caat.org.uk/resources/countrydata/?country_selected=Libya

Approved UK export licences
Year........2010*.....2009.....2008.....2007.....2006
Number.....36..........34.......52........17........13
Value, £m..213.2.....27.4.....14.5.....5.0......1.5

Babbling about Pan Am flight 103 and American blood on Ghadafi's hands, a subject notably absent during the time Ghadafi was oiling the wheels of diplomacy, as it were. But war's a-brewin', and McCain never misses a chance to stick his oar in for war.

you'll come fly with us again real soon."

is obviously a general.

I'm not getting the hair.

Now, I don't get out much, so it can be a long time between doing anything with it but, geez, the guy could have his own stylist.