Chew On This, Sheeple

Gaddafi’s Death: Celebrating Murder While Ushering in Civil War By Orwellwasright's WeblogThe Media’s Deathgasm October 26, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- It’s official: capturing someone alive and quickly executing them, then parading the corpse around on TV 24 hours is “a good thing”. It’s hard to know who the winner was, but the BBC, ITV, Sky and a number of other channels have gone all out the last few days to prove who’s the best at gloating over the murder of Gaddafi (after he was dragged through the streets and sodomized with a knife). Following the alleged “death” of bin Laden and the drone strike which killed Anwar al-Awlaki, and the many other victims of the West’s extrajudicial killings (a tactic increasingly in favour as the “War of Terror” rolls into its eleventh year) it should come as little surprise to people when, once again, the nations which claim to be the strictest adherents to the rule of law bend the rules to the point of breaking when it comes to justifying their own killings. To be fair to those members of the public who are celebrating the death of Gaddafi, many of them have a dire understanding both of the current situation in Libya and the historical context of the Gaddafi regime. Gaddafi – like Saddam, Milosovic, Ahmadinejad and countless others before him – has been overblown as the greatest threat to humanity since (you guessed it) Hitler, a comparison which has become so overworn and debased through constant hyperbole as to become almost meaningless. It’s a routine response from those who defend the West for their crimes against humanity – we may well have killed over a million Iraqis since 2003 (not to mention the 100,000s of children who died as a direct consequence of the pre-invasion UN sanctions) but that doesn’t require any condemnation. After all, we’re the “civilized nations” who are helping to “rebuild” the backwards lands of Africa, the Middle East, and wherever else we see fit to bestow the benefits of “freedom and democracy”. Any deaths that come as a consequence of our noble mission is “utterly regrettable”; the wasteland and degradation we leave behind “good intentions gone awry”. Gaddafi’s Rule: The Facts They Omit One of the perennial myths about the 42 year Gaddafi regime is that it was utterly brutal and repressive – all lived in fear of disappearing into his torture dungeons or being executed while poverty and despair were the facts of daily life. Muhammad min Libya (a pseudonym), writing in the Guardian echoes this, stating, “Many Libyan citizens stood in a long line to take a final look at the man who inflected harm upon each and every one of us through four decades of his dictatorship.” An examination of the facts, however, presents a very different picture. In 2009, Libya sat at the top of the table for Africa on the Human Development Index. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Libya “has made strides in public health and, since 1980, child mortality rates have dropped from 70 per thousand live births to 19 in 2009. Life expectancy has risen from 61 to 74 years of age during the same span of years.” Here are some statistics from the World Health Organizationin the same year: Total life expectancy at birth (years)                      72.3 Male life expectancy at birth (years)                       70.2 Female life expectancy at birth (years)                  74.9 Newborns with low birth weight (%)                         4.0 Children underweight (%)                                              4.8 Perinatal mortality rate per 1000 total births      19 Neonatal mortality rate                                                  11.0 Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births)           14.0 Under five mortality rate (per 1000 live births)  20.1 Maternal mortality ratio (per 10000 live births) 23 The WHO has described Libya’s public health care prior to Operation Odyssey Dawn in the following terms: “Health care is available to all citizens free of charge by the public sector. The country boasts the highest literacy and educational enrollment rates in North Africa. The Government is substantially increasing the development budget for health services…” Similarly, UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics demonstrates a high literacy rate of 89% (99% for the youth), a primary school enrollment rate of 97%, while according to the World Bank, “In a relative short period of time, Libya achieved universal access for primary education, with 98% gross enrollment for secondary, and 46% for tertiary education. In the past decade, girls’ enrollment increased by 12% in all levels of education.” None of the above squares with the idea perpetuated by politicians and the media that Gaddafi had no support in Libya. Indeed, footage of a pro-Gaddafi march held after the NATO bombing had already begun suggests the exact opposite – over 1.5 million people – out of a population of approximately 6 million – took to the streets. Their voices were ignored by the Western press: