Gaddafi’s Son Freed

(image: Getty)

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was part of his father’s inner circle – serving in a diplomatic and public relations capacity.

He held no official government position. Mentioned as a possible successor to his father, he rejected the notion.

US-led NATO raped and destroyed Libya, transforming Africa’s most developed nation into a lawless cauldron of endless violence, deprivation and despair.

Muammar Gaddafi was sodomized to death. Saif was illegally arrested, detained, tortured, tried, imprisoned and sentenced to death.

His lawyer John Jones said judicial proceedings against him amounted to “a trial by militia,” lasting two days, conducted by an illegitimate regime.

“Lawyers were intimidated,” Jones explained. “The judges were intimated. Lawyers had to leave the case.”

Controlled proceedings excluded the right to a proper defense. Only two intimidated witnesses for Saif were allowed. No evidence against him was presented.

Prosecutors relied solely on torture-extracted information – what no legitimate tribunal permits.

Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Division of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) human rights director Claudio Cordone said at the time:

“Concerns over the trial include the fact that several defendants were absent for a number of sessions. The evidence of criminal conduct was largely attributed to the defendants in general, with little effort to establish individual criminal responsibility.”

“(I)t is particularly worrisome that the court handed down nine death sentences. International standards require that death sentences may only be imposed after proceedings that meet the highest level of respect for fair trial standards.”

“The United Nations opposes the imposition of the death penalty as a matter of principle.”

Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani added:

“We had closely monitored the detention and trial and found that international fair trial standards had failed to be met.”

“Among the key shortcomings is the failure to establish individual criminal responsibility in relation to specific crimes.”

Other serious issues included lack of access to lawyers, torture and other forms of ill treatment, along with illegitimate trials conducted in absentia.

An UNSMIL press release at the time said “(d)uring their pre-trial detention defendants were denied access to lawyers and family for prolonged periods, and some reported that they were beaten or otherwise ill-treated, but UNSMIL is not aware of any investigation into these allegations.”

“Many defendants were not represented by a lawyer during the pre-trial process, which deprived them of a crucial opportunity to establish their defense.”

“Defense lawyers said they faced challenges in meeting their clients privately or accessing the full case file, and some said they received threats.”

“They were constrained by the court to two or three witnesses per defendant and some said that witnesses were reluctant to appear in court due to fears about their safety. The court did not respond to defense counsel requests to examine prosecution witnesses.”

Saif was sentenced to death by an illegitimate Tripoli tribunal, the ruling not carried out. He’s now free after over five years of brutalizing detention and imprisonment.

Ordered by the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion, its statement said “(t)he citizen Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Qadafi was released in accordance with the law of the General Afwa issued by parliament, the only legitimate authority in the country.”

It referred to the Tobruk-based so-called Government of National Accord, ordering amnesty for political prisoners.

A contesting National Salvation Government operates in Tripoli. Dozens of rival factions vie for control, including ISIS, al-Qaeda and other US-backed terrorist groups.

An ICC warrant for Saif’s arrest remains outstanding. His whereabouts isn’t known.

Libya: A US-Created Terrorist Haven

US-led NATO aggression on Libya raped and destroyed its sovereign independence – one of history’s great crimes.

Africa’s developed nation was transformed into a cauldron of failed state, terrorist-infested violence, chaos, deep poverty, mass unemployment, and devastating human misery.

Libya was Obama’s war, launched in 2011, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton. Her remark after hearing of Muammar Gaddafi’s death, saying “(w)e came, we saw, he died” alone will long define her pure evil.

Claiming Washington’s aim was humanitarian intervention to establish democratic governance was pure subterfuge, the usual imperial Big Lie justifying naked aggression.

Libya was terror-bombed to destroy its sovereignty, plunder its oil wealth, privatize the world’s largest aquifer system, dollarize the country, exploit its people, and establish pro-Western puppet rule.

Gaddafi supported pan-Africanism, a United States of Africa free from imperial dominance, Libyans sharing in the country’s oil wealth, a notion anathema to America and other Western powers.

Under his 1999 Decision No. 111, all Libyans got free healthcare, education, electricity, water, training, rehabilitation, housing assistance, disability and old-age benefits, interest-free state loans, as well as generous subsidies to study abroad, buy a new car, help couples when they marry, practically free gasoline, and more.

Literacy under his rule rose from 20 – 80%. Libya’s hospitals and private clinics were some of the region’s best. Now they’re in shambles.

Vital public services he provided no longer exist. Pre-war, Libyans had African’s highest standard of living. Homelessness was nonexistent.

Gaddafi believed all Libyans had a right to a home or rent-free apartment, notions unheard of in the West.

He rejected Western-style money-controlled undemocratic democracy, deplored crony capitalism and neoliberal harshness.

During his tenure, women had the right to vote, participate politically, as well as own and sell property independently of their husbands. They were constitutionally granted equal status with men.

Libya’s central bank was state-owned, the interest-free Libyan dinar used for productive economic growth, not speculation, profits and bonuses for predatory bankers.

Gaddafi advocated a new gold standard, replacing dollars with gold dinars, a plan to provide real monetary wealth and value, free from predatory Western lending agencies.

Responsible policies led to his demise. Washington wants control over all other nations – dollar hegemony as the world’s reserve currency the way its dominance is maintained.

Economist Michael Hudson calls this system a “sinister dynamic (because) the US payment deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies.”

They have “little option except to buy US (debt) which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile (global) military build-up” – facilitating endless imperial wars.

Post-Gaddafi Libya is a dystopian failed state. Dozens of rival factions vie for control, including ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The main ones are the so-called pro-Western, Tobruk-based, Government of National Accord (GNA) and Tripoli-based National Salvation Government (GNC).

Both lack legitimacy. Endless violence rages. On Friday, clashes erupted between both factions for control of Tripoli, the country’s capital and largest city, now a battleground.

Dozens were killed, many more wounded, militants and civilians. Fighting continues over the weekend.

Violence in other parts of the country rages. Awash with weapons, no end of it is in sight.

Nearly six years after Gaddafi’s ouster, Libya is now a haven for terrorist groups, rival factions vying for control, the country ravaged, its people immiserated – victimized by US imperial viciousness.

UK Terrorist’s Motive Revealed: Family Says He Wanted Revenge for US Killing Children in Syria

Jomana Abedi, sister of Manchester attacker, Salman Abedi — whose improvised, shrapnel-laden bomb detonated after a concert, killing himself and 22 people, and injuring dozens more — has now disclosed the irrefutable, trenchant reason for the deadly attack, in her brother’s own words.

Blowback.

“I think he saw children — Muslim children — dying everywhere, and wanted revenge. He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “Whether he got that is between him and God.”

However telling, the United States engaging in perpetual warfare throughout the Middle East comprises just one straw on the back of a camel overburdened with possible motivations that Salman Abedi sought annihilation as an act of revenge.

Born in Manchester on New Year’s Eve 1994, the WSJ reports, Abedi had a fairly ordinary childhood — though neighbors found the family to be insular.

Ramadan Abedi, Salman’s father, regularly attended a nearby mosque, and occasionally performed the call to prayer. Older brother, Ismail, also was a regular attendee, but neighbors suggested Salman only joined them sporadically.

In 2011, Abedi traveled to see his father in Libya — both parents hail from the conflict-ravaged North African nation — where they fought in a militia with designs on ousting Muammar Gaddafi, as the revolutionary ripple known as the Arab Spring gripped much of the region.

Called the Tripoli Brigade, the rebel militia fought in western Libya and were key in the eventual taking of the Libyan capital, a victory aligning with the United States’ plot to depose Gaddafi — an utter disaster in the making, as far as mutterings of blowback, and a change in regime ultimately damning the now-decimated nation to interminable conflict.

Abedi and his mother returned to Manchester in 2014, an unnamed person claiming to be a friend of the family told the Wall Street Journal, where, the following year, he began studying business administration at the University of Salford.

He lasted just one year before all-but dropping out.

Then, reports the WSJ,

“In May 2016, an 18-year-old friend of Salman Abedi’s, Abdul Wahab Hafidah, a Briton of Libyan descent, died after being run down by a car and then stabbed in Manchester. Six men and a 15-year-old boy are on trial in a Manchester court this month charged with murder in connection with the killing, which prosecutors have argued was gang-related. The defendants deny wrongdoing.”

Already having grown embittered against mistreatment of Muslims in Britain, Abedi deemed the killing a hate crime, and — whether or not he knew at the time — one of the weightier straws on the allegorical camel’s back. To wit,

“I remember Salman at his funeral vowing revenge,” the Abedi family friend said.

However, hours before he was detained by Libyan authorities, Bloomberg interviewed Ramadan Abedi, who could not imagine his son responsible for the heinous act against innocents.

“I was really shocked when I saw the news, I still don’t believe it,” the patriarch explained from Tripoli.

Ramadan Abedi, according to Bloomberg, first came to Manchester during the 1990s, and left for Libya in 2008 — three years before father and son would fight side-by-side in the rebellion against Gaddafi.

“My son was as religious as any child who opens his eyes in a religious family,” he insisted, suggesting Abedi more devoted than his Manchester neighbors witnessed.

“As we were discussing news of similar attacks earlier, he was always against those attacks, saying there’s no religious justification for them,” Ramadan continued, this time, vaguely echoing his daughter’s description of the young man as ‘kind’ and ‘loving.’

“I don’t understand how he’d have become involved in an attack that led to the killing of children.”

Emphatically, he added, “We condemn these terrorist acts on civilians, innocent people.”

Whatever Salman Abedi’s demented rationale for slaughtering victims as young as eight, a cursory examination of his experiences as a Muslim — split between a life in the West, pockmarked crimes committed against adherents of his faith, and one in his parents’ homeland, a nation shredded by Western so-called foreign policy — evince raw despair at the unlikelihood violence will ever cease.

Abedi, in short, is blowback — transmogrified into rageful human form.

He, the Manchester disaster, is U.S. hegemonic imperialism — pompous in its pillaging and merciless in wanton killing — collateral murder of innocents, moot.

Signing the permission slip to wage war against a tactic has instead brought innovation in the perfection of terrorism — wrought by individuals like Abedi, manipulative quasi-nation-states of militants, and military superpowers, alike.

Fighting this ludicrous war on terror succeeds phenomenally in two areas — providing fertile ground for further terroristic acts, the seeds of which are fertilized with corporate media’s seeds of fear, as well as fomenting anti-Western sentiment into atrocity, and fueling the military industrial complex.

In an unfortunately ironic footnote, it was Muammar Gaddafi, himself, who extended an olive branch of sorts, to former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair — who offered only a deaf ear.

Lamenting that his forces could not withstand the onslaught from al-Qaeda fighters, the Libyan leader pleaded with Blair not to ignore Western interventionism would result in attacks — in Europe.

“They [jihadists] want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe,” Gaddafi admonished in 2011, shortly before the West succeeded in deposing and killing the leader, whose plans for a gold-based currency conflicted with the worldwide U.S. petrodollar-dominated marketplace.

No one in a position to do so heeded that prognostication.

Explaining the potency of blowback has earned sharp rebuke from the still-mourning citizens of Manchester as somehow condoning the attack — but slipping the mourning veil over truth cannot shroud the ugliness of innocents in coffins.

But terror and its war don’t claim only the innocence of their victims — witnesses to carnage on the scale of war cannot unsee the callousness of collateral death. Innocence lost to indiscriminate casualty never returns.

Until the United States-led West reins in its monstrously flawed foreign operations — or, at least, attempts coordination there, with longstanding foes — there will be more Abedis.

In fact, basic principles of blowback guarantee it will be so.

Gaddafi Predicted and Tried to Stop this Terror Wave in UK, So the US Murdered Him

Outspoken critic of Big Government and former U.S. presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul, blasted the West for ignoring admonishments from deposed, late, Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who asserted prior to his death, the rise of U.S.-supported Islamic extremists would lead to attacks on Europe — years before Salman Abedi detonated an explosive device, killing 22 at a concert in Manchester.

Children, adolescents, and adults had gathered for a concert by pop superstar Ariana Grande and had begun to exit the Manchester venue when Abedi exploded a shrapnel-laden device — causing pandemonium, severely injuring scores, and killing 22 people.

Could the Manchester attack have been prevented — even long before MI5 also warned an incident may be forthcoming?

On the Liberty Report, Daniel McAdams noted,

“Gaddafi — when the radicals had started rising in Eastern Libya, when the U.S. was supporting them — he said, ‘I’m telling you guys, these are radical Islamists, these are terrorists, if you keep supporting them, there’s gonna be trouble.’”

McAdams and Dr. Paul cited an article from January, 2016, from the Telegraph, titled, “Colonel Gaddafi warned Tony Blair of Islamist attacks on Europe, phone conversations reveal,” in which the content of communications between the two leaders revealed how precisely the ill-fated leader of Libya prognosticated future blowback from current Western support of radicals.

Apparently lucid enough to grasp the ramifications Western support would effect throughout Europe — in the aiding terrorists to fit its own ends — on February 25, 2011, Gaddafi portended the dark turn in a phone conversation with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, cautioning,

“They [jihadists] want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe.”

Gaddafi, in the half hour call, insisted repeatedly he only wished to shield Libyan civilians from an onslaught of violence wrought by al-Qaeda fighters — a battle in which government forces were unable to make headway. Quoting transcripts of Gaddafi’s comments during the call, the Telegraph continued,

“We are not fighting them, they are attacking us. I want to tell you the truth. It is not a difficult situation at all. The story is simply this: an organisation has laid down sleeping cells in North Africa. Called the Al-Qaeda Organisation in North Africa… The sleeping cells in Libya are similar to dormant cells in America before 9/11.

“They have managed to get arms and terrify people. people can’t leave their homes… It’s a jihad situation. They have arms and are terrorising people in the street.”

Then, in a subsequent call four hours later, he added,

“I will have to arm the people and get ready for a fight. Libyan people will die, damage will be on the Med, Europe and the whole world. These armed groups are using the situation [in Libya] as a justification – and we shall fight them.”

In fact, Abedi’s very family fought Ghaddafi during the revolt in 2011.

As Dr. Paul notes, Gaddafi’s desperate words weren’t intended as a threat, rather, as counsel to Blair on the deleterious repercussions manipulation by the U.S. and Western allies would reap — not only across northern Africa and the Middle East, but in Europe.

Gaddafi, Dr. Paul said, was “saying, ‘this could have bad consequences.’ And it turned out, he was absolutely right.”

Indeed, today saw headlines plastered with news Abedi’s family twice approached British Intelligence with concerns their loved one had begun entertaining terrorist fantasies.

“Abedi’s support for terrorism was reported this year to the security services, and friends had called,” The Times reports. “Britain’s anti-terrorist hotline five years ago with concerns about his views, it was claimed. He was reported for violent statements, including a claim that being a suicide bomber was ‘OK.’”

While it remains unclear whether Abedi garnered targeted surveillance from MI5, what has been made apparent is even direct and unequivocal warnings on specific persons of interest doesn’t necessitate an open and willing ear from perpetually — if ostensively, only — suspicious Western Intelligence agencies.

Abedi’s brother, now having been arrested in Tripoli, allegedly affirmed Salman and himself to be members of the pernicious, self-titled Islamic State — and that his brother told of his plans for the Manchester attack.

However, when it comes to insidious dealings of Intelligence services, the ends — and not warnings with immediacy — seem far too often to play into State decision-making.

Not long after Gaddafi’s pleas to Blair and other Western leaders, his and Libya’s tragic fates were sealed.

With his ouster and killing, plans to supplant the U.S. petrodollar with the gold-based African dinar — which could have brought the continent into economic relevance — could not come to fruition.

And his warnings of impending doom throughout Europe — resulting from years of meddling in the affairs of cultures governments of sovereign nations and the manipulation of terrorist groups to serve hegemonic plunder — can now only echo in the minds of those most guilty for turning a deaf ear.

The Last Country America "Liberated" From An "Evil" Dictator Is Now Openly Trading Slaves

Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

It is widely known that the U.S.-led NATO intervention to topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 resulted in a power vacuum that has allowed terror groups like ISIS to gain a foothold in the country.

Despite the destructive consequences of the 2011 invasion, the West is currently taking a similar trajectory with regard to Syria. Just as the Obama administration excoriated Gaddafi in 2011, highlighting his human rights abuses and insisting he must be removed from power to protect the Libyan people, the Trump administration is now pointing to the repressive policies of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and warning his regime will soon come to an end — all in the name of protecting Syrian civilians.

But as the U.S. and its allies fail to produce legal grounds for their recent air strike - let alone provide concrete evidence to back up their claims Assad was responsible for a deadly chemical attack last week - more hazards of invading foreign countries and removing their heads of state are emerging.

This week, new findings revealed another unintended consequence of “humanitarian intervention”: the growth of the human slave trade.

The Guardian reports that while “violence, extortion and slave labor” have been a reality for people trafficked through Libya in the past, the slave trade has recently expanded. Today, people are selling other human beings out in the open.

“The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages [in Libya],” said Mohammed Abdiker, head of operation and emergencies for the International Office of Migration, an intergovernmental organization that promotes “humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all,” according to its website. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.”

The North African country is commonly used as a point of exit for refugees fleeing other parts of the continent. But since Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, “the vast, sparsely populated country has slid into violent chaos and migrants with little cash and usually no papers are particularly vulnerable,” the Guardian explains.

One survivor from Senegal said he was passing through Libya from Niger with a group of other migrants attempting to flee their home countries. They had paid a smuggler to transport them via bus to the coast, where they would risk taking a boat to Europe. But rather than take them to the coast, the smuggler took them to a dusty lot in Sabha, Libya. According to Livia Manente, an IOM officer who interviews survivors, “their driver suddenly said middlemen had not passed on his fees and put his passengers up for sale.”

“Several other migrants confirmed his story, independently describing kinds of slave markets as well as kinds of private prisons all over in Libya,” she said, adding IOM Italy had confirmed similar stories from migrants landing in southern Italy.

The Senegalese survivor said he was taken to a makeshift prison, which the Guardian notes are common in Libya.

“Those held inside are forced to work without pay, or on meager rations, and their captors regularly call family at home demanding a ransom. His captors asked for 300,000 west African francs (about £380), then sold him on to a larger jail where the demand doubled without explanation.”

When migrants were held too long without having a ransom paid for them, they were taken away and killed. “Some wasted away on meager rations in unsanitary conditions, dying of hunger and disease, but overall numbers never fell,” the Guardian reported.

“If the number of migrants goes down, because of death or someone is ransomed, the kidnappers just go to the market and buy one,” Manente said.

Giuseppe Loprete, IOM Niger’s chief of mission, confirmed these disturbing reports. “It’s very clear they see themselves as being treated as slaves,” he said. He arranged for the repatriation of 1,500 migrants just in the first three months of this year and is concerned more stories and incidents will emerge as more migrants return from Libya.

“And conditions are worsening in Libya so I think we can also expect more in the coming months,” he added.

As the United States government continues to entertain regime change in Syria as a viable solution to the many crises in that country, it is becoming ever-more evident that ousting dictators — however detestable they may be —  is not effective. Toppling Saddam Hussein led not only to the deaths of civilians and radicalization within the population, but also the rise of ISIS.

As Libya, once a beacon of stability in the region, continues to devolve in the fallout from the Western “humanitarian” intervention – and as human beings are dragged into emerging slave trades while rapes and kidnappings plague the population - it is increasingly obvious that further war will only create even further suffering in unforeseen ways.

Obama Ended His Presidency With A Bang – at Least in Libya

January 20, 2017   |   Darius Shahtahmasebi

(ANTIMEDIA) — Barack Obama has ended his presidential career doing what he does best: dropping bombs. This time, Obama decided to target an ISIS camp in Libya, with initial estimates suggesting over 80 militants (or 80 people, depending on the source) were killed.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters that the fighters training in the camp, located just outside the Libyan city of Sirte, “posed a security risk to Libya, to its neighbors, to our allies in Africa and Europe, and to the United States.”

The motives for the attack are, therefore, arguably a bit dubious given that ISIS is currently making serious headway in Syria, threatening at least 250,000 civilians inside the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. The U.S. military has been striking the militants making advances in Syria, nor have they been striking the reinforcements piling into Syria from Iraq. These reinforcements have largely turned the tide in the assault on Deir ez-Zor in ISIS’ favor.

Further adding mystery to the attack is the fact that ISIS has almost been driven out of the Libyan city of Sirte entirely. It could be that these fighters located on the outskirts of Sirte posed a serious threat to the entire world, as advanced by the Pentagon. But it is not clear why a handful of ISIS fighters in rural Libya, who have almost been defeated, pose more of a threat than the bulk of its forces currently grappling in Syria.

CNN reported that the Department of Defense showed reporters a rare video of surveillance footage of the ISIS fighters loading weapons into pick-up trucks. A second video showing the camps being bombed was also presented to reporters.

Peter Cook also said the strike was carried out by two US Air Force B-52 bombers flying from Missouri, a 30-plus hour round trip mission. Cook also confirmed that over 100 bombs and missiles were dropped on the targets. According to the Telegraph, the B-52s were refueled five times in the air. The attack also used drones fitted with hellfire missiles.

When the U.S. sealed former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s fate in 2011, it was with an American drone controlled via satellite from Las Vegas, Nevada — and flown out of Sicily — that struck Gaddafi’s motorcade in Sirte. Clearly, the U.S. has aircraft much closer to Libya (and specifically, Sirte) that could be used to strike militants.

The strike was authorized personally by Obama. A “source” told Fox News that the real reason these bombers were used in such inefficient circumstances (considering the distance from Missouri to Libya), was to “send a strategic message” to other adversaries such as Russia and China. If this is true, the strike could possibly be in response to Russia’s decision to host a Libyan faction leader known as Khalifa Haftar, giving him a tour of Russia’s aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov. Haftar opposes the U.N.-backed government based in Tripoli, which currently does not have full control of the country.

Obama’s final actions as president sum up his presidency perfectly: drop over 100 bombs, kill close to 100 people (remember that Obama classifies any military-age male in a strike zone as a combatant, whether or not they are actually fighters), confront nuclear powers Russia and China in the Middle East, and receive barely a blink from the corporate media in response.

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Why Obama And Hillary Wanted Libya’s Gaddafi Toppled And Killed

 

October 20 marked the fifth anniversary of Muammar Gaddafi’s sodomized-related death – US imperial viciousness responsible for his murder and destruction Africa’s most developed, socially responsible nation.

Endless violence and chaos replaced a society safe and fit to live in. Gaddafi provided Libyans with important benefits  Americans can’t imagine. More on this below.

Hillary orchestrated war to eliminate him, wanting US-controlled puppet governance replacing Libyan sovereign independence.

In early 2011, made-in-the-USA protests preceded US-led NATO terror-bombing, indiscriminately massacring civilians, creating charnel house conditions.

Endless violence continues daily, exacerbated by ISIS fighters infesting parts of the country, Washington supporting them with funding, weapons and other material aid.

Obama and Hillary wanted Gaddafi eliminated for instituting policies all nations should embrace. Previous articles discussed them.

He supported pan-Africanism, a United States of Africa free from imperial domination. He wanted Libyans sharing in the country’s oil wealth, a notion foreign to America and other Western powers.

Under his 1999 Decision No. 111, all Libyans got free healthcare, education, electricity, water, training, rehabilitation, housing assistance, disability and old-age benefits, interest-free state loans, as well as generous subsidies to study abroad, buy a new car, help couples when they marry, practically free gasoline, and more.

Literacy under Gaddafi rose from 20 – 80%. Libya’s hospitals and private clinics were some of the region’s best. Now they’re in shambles.

Vital public services he provided no longer exist. Pre-war, Libyans had African’s highest standard of living. Homelessness was nonexistent.

Gaddafi believed all Libyans had a right to a home or rent-free apartment, notions unheard of in the West.

He rejected farcical Western-style money-controlled democracy (sic), deplored crony capitalism and neoliberal harshness.

During his tenure, women had the right to vote, participate politically, as well as own and sell property independently of their husbands.

Clause 5 of Libya’s 1969 Constitution granted them equal status with men, notably for education and employment.

In January 2011, weeks before US-led NATO naked aggression began, the UN Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for instituting and supporting important political, economic, education, social and cultural rights.

He called his Great Man-Made River (GMMR) development of an ocean-sized aquifer beneath Libya’s sands the “Eighth Wonder of the World” – wanting all Libyans sharing in its benefits.

Washington and rogue Western partners wanted it privatized for exclusive corporate gain.

Under Gaddafi, the Central Bank of Libya was state-owned, the interest-free Libyan dinar used for productive economic growth, not speculation, profits and bonuses for predatory bankers.

He funded Africa’s only communications satellite, saving hundreds of millions of dollars for low-cost incoming and outgoing calls.

He provided two-thirds of the $42 billion needed to launch a public African Central Bank, Monetary Fund and Investment Bank.

He supported a new gold standard, replacing dollars with gold dinars, aiming to provide real monetary wealth and value, free from predatory Western lending agencies.

Washington wants dollar hegemony, maintaining it as the world’s reserve currency, an agenda challenged by Russia, China and other nations, increasingly trading bilaterally in their own currencies.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is threatened. Neocons infesting Washington want regime change. His redoubtable leadership prevents it.

Will nuclear war on Russia follow Hillary’s ascension to power next year? Will the unthinkable become reality?