Libya: From Africa’s Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Intervention

So now we know that during the affair, weapons were funnelled to militants with links to Al-Qaeda, the claims of Ghadafi's brutality were largely exaggerated/falsified, and ISIS-linked rebels (or those who would eventually join ISIS) were operating in Libya the whole time.

Looking back, the evidence seems pretty damning. Whatever promped NATO's push for action, we can say for sure that humanitarianism was the last thing on their minds.

This is a good little article (kind of old though) that details exactly how badly Libya has been screwed.

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.

The militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO’s intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.

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.

The fall of Gaddafi’s administration has created all of the country’s worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone.

Read the rest here: www.globalresearch.ca...

And who can forget this little gem:

m.youtube.com...

a reply to: Drest

Those responsible should be hiding in caves and they are running for presidency. When will this stop?

These are international war crimes. Not to mention CIA torture.

How is murdering a leader of another country funny?

They are all murdering psychopaths.

a reply to: Drest
Don't mess with the US economy or its stranglehold on the world economy...or you will be branded a terrorist, helping terrorists, or the gullible public will be told you are making nukes...
Link

That's one way to distort statistics, I suppose...

Indeed, Libya's per capita GDP was the highest in Africa prior to the War, but that doesn't mean the people were in any way among the richest.

All that statistic does is divide the total GDP by the population, which is helpful for Libya as it had vast Oil production for such a small population, but much of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the regime faithful.

As it stands at the moment, the Libyan GDP is 80% (it more than doubled between 2011 and 2012) what it was prior to the War, with pre-War GDP/capita at around $12.5k per capita and current GDP/capita at around $11.9K, so not that different, really.

But as I said above, GDP/capita assumes the wealth is shared equally - it never was and still isn't now.

a reply to: Drest

If Obama can get a Nobel peace prize and Gaddafi can't..

The Lybian state-owned bank and proposed North African economic union set a bad precedent in the eyes of the globalists... this man was the JFK of my generation.

The definition of defiance:

a reply to: Drest

Not to mention many of these so called Libyan Freedom Fighters would commit acts of ethnic cleansing against the black population of Libya.

a reply to: Drest

Libya: From Africa’s Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Intervention.

I think what you really meant was "Libya: From Africa’s Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After Israeli controlled American Intervention."

a reply to: Drest

We're the bad guys, like it or not.

originally posted by: stumason
That's one way to distort statistics, I suppose...

Indeed, Libya's per capita GDP was the highest in Africa prior to the War, but that doesn't mean the people were in any way among the richest.

All that statistic does is divide the total GDP by the population, which is helpful for Libya as it had vast Oil production for such a small population, but much of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the regime faithful.

As it stands at the moment, the Libyan GDP is 80% (it more than doubled between 2011 and 2012) what it was prior to the War, with pre-War GDP/capita at around $12.5k per capita and current GDP/capita at around $11.9K, so not that different, really.

But as I said above, GDP/capita assumes the wealth is shared equally - it never was and still isn't now.

Do you happen to have a source for how horrible it was for the average libyan (economically)?
I have found only positive things that would make the average American wish they lived there.
Link

a reply to: stumason

The line about the Netherlands is also disingenuous. It doesn't say fewer people per capita lived below the poverty line. It just says fewer people. The Netherlands has a population almost three times as large as Libya. Odds are they're going to have more people living below the poverty line.

originally posted by: stumason
That's one way to distort statistics, I suppose...

Indeed, Libya's per capita GDP was the highest in Africa prior to the War, but that doesn't mean the people were in any way among the richest.

All that statistic does is divide the total GDP by the population, which is helpful for Libya as it had vast Oil production for such a small population, but much of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the regime faithful.

As it stands at the moment, the Libyan GDP is 80% (it more than doubled between 2011 and 2012) what it was prior to the War, with pre-War GDP/capita at around $12.5k per capita and current GDP/capita at around $11.9K, so not that different, really.

But as I said above, GDP/capita assumes the wealth is shared equally - it never was and still isn't now.

Oh god, another person blabbering on about GDP like it's the real (and only) measure of a nation's worth. Not even close. The point is that Ghadafi nationalized the oil wealth and implemented a number of generous social programs, some of them far more generous than anything you'd find in the West.

On top of that, Libya under Ghadafi was a bastion of women's rights in Africa and the ME. Ironically enough, the "humanitarian" interventionists have now destroyed most opportunities that women once held in that country, especially now that so many are living under the thumb of Islamists.

Did you even read the entire article?

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.

In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.

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.

One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights.

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.

Nowadays, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.

a reply to: Drest
It always makes me wonder how the history books are going to portray the US or any Western country in matters like these...