Ron Paul addresses Supporters after Iowa defeat

Did you really think that a caucus win in Iowa was going to awaken the masses and inspire an electoral revolution? Revolutions are neither started, nor won, at the ballot box. Ideally, it does not come down to the ammo box. Remember that 70% of the electorate is so disenfranchised that they don’t ever bother to vote on anything. Ever.  The other 30% either believe that the system is actually designed to serve the public interest (it ain’t) or they are naive enough to believe that playing by the system’s rules can actually effect real change (it can’t).

Did you really think that the entrenched political interests would not have used such an “anomaly” as a Ron Paul victory to discredit the caucuses? Or that the mainstream media which has ignored Paul’s candidacy thus far would give a fair and balanced report?  They practically telegraphed this tactic the last few days, every major news outlet reading from the prepared script that a Ron Paul victory would be meaningless, and that it would only serve to undermine the importance/significance of the caucuses anyways (of course, when an establishment candidate wins, all of these arguments are left behind and the people are none-the-wiser, because they swallow everything the mainstream media forces down their collective gullets.

Did you really think this was going to change a damn thing? The system is so incredibly, indescribably, unimaginably corrupt that no amount of tinkering, no amount of swapping basically interchangeable cogs stamped with “R” or “D” but at the same time indicative of no real or measurable differences, up to and including the figurehead role of “President”.  And all this, of course, is to say nothing of how this system is per se illegitimate.

So tell me what you wanted out of this.

As far as politicians are concerned (fuck the whole lot of ‘em, in my opinion) he is certainly among the least-objectionable and although there are certainly issues I take with some of his positions, the Republican field is an absolute nightmare compared to Paul. I’m not saying I wasn’t pulling for the guy.

I just want to know what other people’s expectations were. Mine were not very high, although I’ll admit to feeling a little giddy when I saw some of the early polling results.

Today, we have the Department of Homeland Security doling out billions of dollars (a nice interactive map, here) to Everytown, USA, in order to supply them with battlefield-grade arms and armor, to fight hypothetical bogeymen and non-existent threats.

Just your ordinary small town police force, nothing to see here

Authorities in Fargo, ND (which has averaged 2 homicides per year over the last 5 years) spent $8 million buying state-of-the-art military grade weapons like the assault rifles which now come standard in every squad car, and the “$256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret”.

Sadly, rather than being some unfortunate exception, Fargo is just another example in the trend to militarize local police departments (via Daily Beast).

• In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department owns a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone, like those used to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists in the remote tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• In Augusta, Maine, with fewer than 20,000 people and where an officer hasn’t died from gunfire in the line of duty in more than 125 years, police bought eight $1,500 tactical vests.
• Police in Des Moines, Iowa, bought two $180,000 bomb-disarming robots
• An Arizona sheriff is now the proud owner of a surplus Army tank.

To understand this trend, you have to understand a little bit about government appropriations. Generally the money is on the table and you have to use it or lose it. The logic is almost always that if you don’t spend the money, if you don’t pretend you need it, then you can get by with less, so they cut your budget. And government agencies are always in the business of preserving their power, whether it is just looking out for No. 1, or something more Machiavellian like amassing your own little fiefdom or mercenary force, the incentive structure in government always works the same way. Use it or lose it.

Also, follow the money:

One beneficiary of Homeland’s largesse are military contractors, who have found a new market for their wares

Warfare is big business and government contracts are essentially guaranteed profit. So the companies involved in this business can afford to spend lots of money (given to them in fulfillment of government contracts) lobbying the government to give them even more budget for larger contracts next year. It is a sick cycle that shows no signs of abating any time soon.

The article highlights some moral hazard of the hyper-militarization, which I would liken to “Field of Dreams”. If you build it, they will come. Well, if you give it to them, they will find a way to use it.

“With local law enforcement, their mission is to solve crimes after they’ve happened, and to ensure that people’s constitutional rights are protected in the process,” says Jesselyn McCurdy, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The military obviously has a mission where they are fighting an enemy. When you use military tactics in the context of law enforcement, the missions don’t match, and that’s when you see trouble with the overmilitarization of police.”

When the only tool you have is a hammer, sooner or later, everything starts to look like a nail. When you arm officers to the teeth, when you train them for war, when you hire a disproportionate amount of ex-soldiers, and when you bombard their psyche with warrior mentality training it is not really a surprise when they start putting that training in to practice, no matter if its warranted or not.  Over the last decade we’ve seen an increasing number of SWAT teams raiding teenage rave parties or serving routine drug warrants on non-violent offenders, creating volatility and chaos where there would never have been any had the police taken a more conventional approach and we are even seeing incidents of police tasering and pepper-spraying children.

Riot police attacking protestors

What will be the longer-term ramifications of increased militarization, especially in light of NDAA and the PATRIOT Act? I fear that these weapons will one day be turned on the people of this country. I fear that it is a matter of “when”, not “if”. We’re already seeing some of it in the deplorable way that local cops have handled several situations in the Occupy Movement, still in its infancy.

As government institutions always seek to preserve and expand their power even at the expense of their constituents’ liberties and livelihoods, there doesn’t need to be any evil villain, plotting and scheming, no Illuminati/New World Order tin-foil hat bullshit. All of the pieces are already falling in to place, the product of human action, not of human design. In other words, it doesn’t matter if they’re explicitly preparing for a civil war, everything they’re doing is inadvertently preparing for one, anyways.

A century ago, the Federal government’s armories were turned against its citizens, used to put down popular movements and general strikes.

Today, they’re shipping the munitions directly to what will eventually be the front lines.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The 1% Create Jobs

The official unemployment rate is still hovering around 9% which is double what is ordinarily considered healthy, and I’m pretty sure the actual unemployment rate is more like 15% or higher.  Even with these facts in the headlines every day, some of the 1% have the audacity to play the “job creation” card.

“It’s simply a fact that pretty much all the private- sector jobs in America are created by the decisions of ‘the 1 percent’ to hire and invest.” — Robert Rosenkranz, CEO of Wilmington, Delaware-based Delphi Financial Group Inc.

In other words, “We are responsible for the fate of the economy. Don’t villainize us for the economy’s fate. We are responsible for the fate of the economy!” And thus the ridiculosity of Orwellian newspeak reaches a new zenith.  If the 1% create jobs, and as we all know they are making something like 6 to 6,000 times the national median income, then there really is no excuse for a 15% unemployment rate? Why aren’t they creating more jobs?

Blame the Rich!

Wealth doesn’t make you a bad person. I’m not going to object to that. But still, it is virtually impossible for a good person to make 1% fuck-you-money on merit alone. You’ve got to be willing to lie, cheat and steal to “succeed” in this game because those are the rules.

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it.” — Jamie Dimon (the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks)

“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive.” —John A. Allison IV, a director of BB&T Corp

As members of the most politically privilged oligopoly in the history of mankind, a private banking cartel which creates nothing but debt, and which profits from indenture, inflation, and seignorage, you are not rich you’re filthy rich from stolen money. It is quite likely that you have never “created” anything in your adult life, and even those products of others’ labor for which you may claim responsibility (as a financier), for each of those ventures you “enabled” or made possible with Monopoly Money, there were dozens more which were excluded from the system of privilege.

Tax the Rich!

But it seems there is some infighting going on, though, as others like that hypocrite Warren Buffet, or Nick Hanauer who’s $6B nest egg was enabled by Microsoft’s patent and intellectual property trolls, argue that,

“Rich businesspeople … don’t create jobs.” Instead, Hanaur says, “Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth.”

Except that there is not one shred of evidence that backs up this ludicrous claim. The baby-boom era’s “productivity”, about which many wax nostalgic, was made possible only by exploiting the third world in order to make up for 50 years of total warfare that ravaged most of the world. This is the Broken Window Fallacy (link to a summary, but I do encourage you to read the full text) on an existential scale, but the lesson is the same: You know what would be better than re-building a bridge? NOT BLOWING IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

And this does not even attempt to account for the value of the ~200 million (or more) human lives expended during last century’s conflicts which can never be replaced.

Skin in the Game

The idea that lower-income households, who pay no Federal income tax, have no “skin in the game” is absurd. The only reason I mention it is because it is so wrong that I can’t ignore it.

“You have to have skin in the game, I’m not saying how much people should [pay in federal income taxes]. But we should all be part of the system.” — Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone Group LP , when asked about lower-income U.S. households who pay no income taxes.

This is simply blaming the victim for his plight, like the argument that the poor are lazy and un-industrious, not motivated, dumb, or incompetent. In other words, it is not bad enough that the system has utterly failed these people, no, they should have to contribute their “fair share” as well.

There is an entire movement of people who hate you.  Wake the fuck up.

Sometimes the camera would pan to another candidate while Paul was speaking and this is when I noticed some strange behavior in the other candidates’ body language. When Paul was talking about the fake budget cuts, Mitt Romney’s facial expression was one of incredulity. But it was obvious to me that this was a feigned expression. As far as acting goes, it was awful, like bad daytime soap opera eyebrow acting awful.

Here is the full debate. It’s really long, but I have tried to timestamp a few relevant items for you.

If you fast-forward to about 55:50 this is what I remember seeing. Paul says,

Nobody cares about the budget! We’re in big trouble and nobody wants to cut anything. So if you want to keep sending foreign aid overseas and these endless wars that you don’t have to declare and go in to Libya without going to without consulting Congress. The biggest threat to our national security is our financial condition and this is just aggravating it.

Romney responds, first by introducing the phony $1 Trillion spending cuts, lies about it being all cut from the defense budget and then by deflecting blame to Obama. Clever! Notice that even while Romney is puking out these lies, Paul is attentive to what he is saying. His body language shows he is engaged and although he disagrees he is paying attention and thinking of how to respond.

This is where I noticed Romney’s lie face. First, when Wolfie says Paul wants to respond, watch Romney shake his head dismissively at about 57:12. Paul’s rebuttal begins around 57:16 and 5 or 6 seconds later you can watch Romney give him the full on eye-rolling, head-shaking you’re-so-crazy look.

Romney needs to persuade others in to thinking “Oh that’s just crazy Ron Paul with his crazy ideas about sound money and non-intervention…” so he puts on this mask whenever Ron Paul makes a true statement.  If Romney can convince the majority of voters that Ron Paul (or any candidate, for that matter) is crazy, or has crazy ideas, then he improves his chances of winning the election.  As far as his political career is concerned, it is in Romney’s best interest to lie.

I feel like I caught him lying. The expression on his face was supposed to imply “Ron Paul you’re a fucking looney tune” but it was obvious to me that Romney didn’t actually believe this lie he was trying to put forth.

I also noticed Gingrich doing it in a few places, too, like here (timestamped from a different video):

I would like to remind you that in addition to his desire to "strengthen" the PATRIOT Act, Newt Gingrich the dickhead who cheated on his wife while she was going through cancer treatment and then left her.

As far as mainstream political candidates go, Ron Paul is without a doubt among the least-offensive. It is funny to watch the other parasites in the political class react to what Ron Paul says. They don’t know how to react without lying, and it usually shows up in their body language.

Ron Paul has some ideas that  I don’t endorse like his rather unprincipled wishy-washy anti-federalism (which clouds a lot of his prescriptions) and particularly his failure to embrace just a little bit of the left when it comes to things like labor or the environment, etc. But he also wants to abolish a lot of shit that, frankly, needs to be abolished. Like perpetual war in 100+ countries around the globe, and the corresponding export of weapons of destruction that serve only to enrich well-heeled capitalists and government contractors (paid for by our tax dollars) and make the rest of the world less safe for everyone in it.

On balance I think he would be an improvement over the status quo by a long shot. He was certainly better than any of the 6 clowns he shared the stage with last night.

It is unfair and intellectually lazy post hoc ergo propter hoc to conclude that all crimes occurring in the vicinity of a protest are inextricably linked to the protest, or ideologically the protesters do not oppose these crimes, or all protesters are criminals like this, etc. Some are crimes of opportunity. I’m not trying to suggest they are excusable, but whenever you have large numbers of people congregating, it presents an opportunity that miscreants may take advantage of (e.g., indecent exposure, theft, etc.).

As for the more serious claims like the 4,000 arrests, the “white house shooter”, $10M worth of damage, and murder, need a little more information. You will have to go through the trouble of manually typing the URLs because the source does not embed them.

1. Reports on the shooting death of Berkely student say “University police said there is no indication that the incident was related to a day of rallies at Berkeley linked to anti-Wall Street protests.”
2. The white house shooting article cited in this source indicates that “Police believe Ortega-Hernandez is mentally ill. ” and only that he “may have spent time with” the protesters.
3. The cited story for the claimed “10 million dollars” damage due to arson says this: Arrest papers available to the public do not connect Occupy Fort Collins to the arson fires, and police made no connection between the group’s protest and Gilmore’s arrest. Organizers could not immediately be reached for comment on Gilmore.
4. And as for the 4,000 arrests… as I’ve noted before it is not uncommon where large groups congregate in protest for people to be arrested en masse. I theorized why the Tea Party has not been subject to the same sort of scrutiny, but in any event it should be noted that “arrests” are a fake statistic. Pay attention over the weeks and months to come, how many of these 4,000 are actually going to be prosecuted? How many of them will actually be found guilty? The number will be considerably smaller than 4,000.

Further, even if some of these incidents can be pinned on an individual who is supportive of OWS, it is neither fair or accurate to suggest or imply that these outliers are representative of the total OWS population.

The link also suggests that exactly zero tea partiers have committed such crimes. Although it may be verifiable that no protesters (in the act of protest) have committed any such crimes, it is statistically improbably to suggest that no tea partiers, anywhere, ever, have been involved in any criminal act up to and including murder, rape, arson, theft, etc.

And for some additional context, the Tea Party is essentially for preserving existing property relations up to and including gross inequality under (what I believe to be ) a mistaken or incomplete understanding of free market fundamentals. The Tea Party idea that “We just want to keep what we have earned whereas the Occupy protesters want government handouts” is a made-for-TV-pundits talking point, in other words, it is a false dichotomy and demonstrably untrue for many of the people involved in the OWS protests.

And their form of political protest is different – if you can even call it protest. They are not a threat, so the media and the establishment has no need to vilify them by propaganda or provoke them in to making tactical mistakes.

I don’t know how many Tea Partiers have been arrested. Maybe it is zero. So what?

Protesters being arrested in Atlanta

It is an unsubstantiated question-begging attempt to vilify OWS:  they are criminals because they have been arrested, therefore, disassociate. Notice the blind deference to prevailing ruling class attitudes, questioning neither the legitimacy of the arrests, nor the merits of the protests (I would expect any group seeking real change to consider these factors).

I’ll leave the merits of the protests, these have been covered amply by others. As for the arrests, there are two main reasons why the State arrests people.

• They are a threat to others (rapists, murderers, robbers, and a great deal of victimless crimes which the state lumps in this category)
• They are a threat to the State’s existing power relations

First and foremost, as long as OWS remains a dynamic grass-roots movement, and as long as they challenge the very legitimacy of the status quo, they remain a political threat, and so they will continue to be persecuted for trying to bring their dissenting opinions to fruition.

Additionally, OWS’s siege-like tactics present the ruling class with a more sustained problem than other political activists like the Tea Party, who’s strategy thus far has been simply to show up, complain for a few hours, and then go back home to the suburbs. The authorities can’t just wait for the protesters to go home at the end of the day because at the end of the day the protesters are not going home! Because the Tea Party is not waging a sustained protest, they don’t require the attention or scrutiny reserved for larger demonstrations like Occupy; as a result there are far fewer opportunities for the police to intervene.

Aside from the question of strategy, at the end of the day most of the Tea Partiers are still essentially pro-establishment and so they are not being arrested because they don’t matter and they don’t matter because the ruling class knows how to exploit and appease an organized political front.

On the other hand, the ruling class does not know how to handle a Hydra like the Occupy movement. If you want things to change, you’d better pray it remains that way.

Unfortunately, the comments were full of fail: Once you buy in to the propaganda known as the American Dream, there is virtually no limit to the bullshit you’ll apologize for.  I hate to paint with a broad brush, but it seems like people apologize for capitalism because they’ve bought in to the propaganda and they honestly do believe that one day if they just work hard enough they will also succeed. And although some people do succeed, these are exceptions rather than the rule.

Oh, the lulz. Except they're serious.

John: Good for you. You took an opportunity that most people don’t have. Maybe you had a good idea that others didn’t think of. Maybe you had some capital saved up that many people don’t have. Maybe you just got lucky. Just because you were raised to believe something doesn’t make it true. Lots of people work their asses of and still struggle to make ends meet. A generation ago families could (and often did) live comfortably middle-class lifestyles on a single income whereas today it takes 2 parents working full time to scrape by. The most important part about a free market is the freedom. If you’re working 80 hours a week to get by, you’re not free, you’re indebted to an exploitative system.

You are working 80 hours a week non-stop just to “do alright”.  Is this the sort of world you want for future generations? Should it be this hard to put food on the table and a roof over your children’s heads?

Ruth: Try to read your words with someone else’s brain, preferably not John’s because you’re making the same mistakes. You believe that the 1% normally acquire their wealth through honest hard work, frugality and ingenuity, the fruits of which labor is passed from generation to generation. This ignores a great many people who succeed only insofar as they can exploit a system of privilege to their advantage. It is not a level playing field and success is not determined predominately by merit.

There are a million fucking reasons why we’re not free and we don’t have a free market, and each of these distortions has a ripple-effect of consequences that further distort the array of opportunities available, the choices we are presented. You’re forget that most of the people who play in to this game will never make it, most will fail somewhere along the way, thus the “1%”. Is this the sort of world that you want?

Bill: You’re making a common mistake. Maybe you believe that the bastardized “market” that we have is a near-enough approximation of what a really free market would look like just because we get the illusion of choice in some areas of our lives. The rich are rich because they work hard and the poor are poor because they’re dumb and lazy. Way to blame the victims. Do you really believe that Goldman Sachs isn’t rigging the game? Is this the sort of world that you want?

Donald: You are a beacon of light in an otherwise regrettable thread.

The rest of you, you need to pull your heads out of the fucking sand and understand the problems we face for what they are. People are protesting because they want to work and can’t find jobs. They’re protesting because at every level, their governments and elected “leaders” have let them down. They’re protesting because they’ve realized that the illusion of meritocracy is just an illusion, we don’t live in a free market or anything remotely resembling one, success is an exception rather than the rule, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get by and to plan and save for the future.

These people aren’t lazy, they’re fucking fed up.

But I digress…

Someone else's crappy clip-art composite.

Is this “Change”?

In a nutshell, the proposal will:

• forgive any balance after 20 years of payments (currently the limit is 25 years).

• let you reduce your loan payments to 10% of discretionary income (instead of the present 15%).

Which sounds like a lot, until you realize that the principal outstanding is a truly extraordinary $1 TRILLION.

$60,000,000,000 < $1,000,000,000,000

Which sounds like a lot, until you realize that Washington bailed out the banks with THREE TIMES that extraordinary amount in 2009, alone.

$1,000,000,000,000 < $3,000,000,000,000

Probably it’s just another half-assed plan to appease us, so we can go back to our materialistic, consumption-driven culture of death.

A disconnect of intellect
Separates 1 sect
Of society that has yet to see,
The reality of tyranny
Terrorizing our liberty
Infiltrating our democracy
By misinforming you and I
With black, bold-face headline lies,
From white papers and men with ties
To planes falling from the sky!
Shrouding us in guided fear,
Blurring what was once clear,
Promising the end is near
Watching middle-class disappear,
While the CEO’s always rising stock
Can feed and house a Detroit block,
Decayed and ruined from financial shock,
Trapped by bars, key and lock.

United we stand behind soldiers who fall,
The willing few who risk it all
By volunteer or government’s call,
The Constitution would be appalled
That this poem need be written at all,
Or, that power is reserved for political pull
Extorting from the Middle East
Black blood’s perpetual profitable feast,
Making war the sustainable beast
Politicians’ worry about second to least
Trumped only by those on Wall Street
Who take pride that our ends won’t meet,
Enjoying poverty in their discrete
Malcontent for our absent greed,
Contempt for those we cannot feed,
While we fight for basic needs,
We’re told to pick-up from the straps
Where our boots and courage overlap
With souls worn thin from wealth’s gap,
Powerless to escape the unnecessary trap

Of political divisiveness
Increasing dismissiveness,
Making people grow leery of alternative theories
The main-stream floods, banks with no hole in its paddles
We’re boat without steam left sinking in battle
No savior near on white mare’s saddle
No magnanimous rider who’s not an insider
Will build a bridge, or damn the creek flowing wider
Forcing us to drown or swim across.
For when we sink it’s not their loss
Since the 1% fit in one yacht,

Whether or not

This is our country! For which you fought,
For the classroom in which you taught
The simple beauty of free thought,
The Achilles heel to being bought.
Though government paid persons bails,
No one human is too big to fail
Or small enough to escape the jail
Stifling justice’s disgraceful wail,
With death sentence or life in cell.
The highest price is paid in blood
By bomb, bullet and nature’s flood.
Not by those who wear white collars,
Who own the banks and political scholars,
Talking heads, confusing words for dollars,
Censoring choices for our selection,
Diluting truth and fair election –
An anonymous, executive, backdoor connection –
Buried beneath its strategic intention
Lay 99% seeking release from the tension,
Without a paycheck or a pension,
Or even an unemployment extension!
Denied by those with luxuries’ leisure,
Free from debt and property seizure,
From war abroad and at home,
To those who can’t secure a loan,
Leasing life, liberty never owned –
In exchange to be left alone.

99% of the blue collar power
Can rebuild towers in hours
If water is fed to withering flowers,
Its pollen and petals kept as ours,
With thorns, stigma, style, and stem,
Its pistil to protect us from men,
Soliciting our brethren,
Be a spring of sacrificial lambs,
Patriots! Die, but live and be damned.
A people misled to understand,
Year by year, wars with no end;
Fear by fear, our rights apprehend.
The use of liberties amongst civil men
Silenced as rogue, political dissent!
Drowned by noise of the absurd,
The banished black sheep of the herd.
Curiosity? Killed, by the cat
For questioning how it got fat,
Why our soldiers still lay flat
By will of the aristocrat,
Who celebrate corporate goals
And the sale of our souls –
Only at a convenient price –
Not the blood of men, but that of mice.

Now is the time to exchange the blood,
Build an Ark and reverse the flood
Of shameless corporate and political power
Suffocating blue into hopeless collar –
Second by second, hour by hour,
We, the People, grow into a beautiful flower.
Black, gay, woman or white,
History is the enemy we fight
Against indifference toward our rights,
Uniquely human versus corporate might.
They may preach peace from private steeples,
But cowards are cunning and often evil,
They lobby to make sure it’s legal,
The 99’s voice is no longer feeble

Because

P.

People

E.

Everywhere

A.

Are

C.

Created

E.

Equal.

What the world has witnessed in Libya is not the rosy push to democracy that everyone is being led to believe, rather it is a nation being pushed into armed lawlessness by outside forces, the prime example being the a summary execution of deposed leader, Mommar Qaddafi — an extrajudicial murder which was at least tacitly supported by NATO.

Qaddafi wasn’t killed in a crossfire, nor a firefight or gun battle as some headlines have suggested. Instead, the video clearly shows him alive in captivity (being beaten and harassed, no less), yet he turns up dead with bullets in his head, chest and stomach while in custody.

What we are left with now, is a country which has no functional government and as we have seen in most armed struggles in the African continent or elsewhere (Afghanistan comes to mind) what is likely to occur is the birth of warlords (Somalia, Sudan) as there is a huge population that is now armed with no real prospect of de-arming them.

We are likely to witness a cycle of violence as these factions, at odds with whatever puppets are put in place, struggle for power. This wasn’t a legitimate military action, despite the fact that is being portrayed as one there is no command structure; there are no rules for them. This has been displayed countless times in their revolution, through the looting of buildings as well as the murder of African migrant workers in the country who did not have the means to leave when the fighting broke out. The murder of the Africans which has been well documented and criticized by the African Union is committed under the guise of killing mercenaries.

All of these, lawless actions which NATO has been complicit in promoting and encouraging (like blowing up water pipelines, and then the factories that make the replacement pipes). Contrast this with Qaddafi’s Libya.  Qaddafi’s Libya had the highest standard of living of any African country…

Sirte, before NATO bombing

… although the prosperity was short-lived once NATO came to play.

Sirte, after NATO bombing

Qaddafi was also responsible for keeping the oil industry profits going to the people instead of multinational corporations (although not for long).

Certainly, Qaddafi did some terrible things, and he deserved to be tried for his crimes, but this was an extra-judicial murder, sponsored and supported by all the NATO allies whose companies will certainly benefit from their direct intervention in regime change and infrastructure reconstruction.

How quickly the world forgets what a great ally Qaddafi was in the “War on Terror” – as recently as two years ago – yet overnight he became a pariah for the United States and other former imperial powers to scapegoat and divert attention away from some of the more real problems in the Middle East and Northern Africa.