Another One Bites the Dust

"We hope Qhadafhi will be killed or captured soon so that you don't have to fear him anymore." -- Hillary Clinton

When talking about the "new" style of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt said, "...terror is no longer used as a means to frighten and exterminate opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient."

What we see happening in Libya now is the end of the old style of totalitarianism, where one man rises through the ranks to rule with an iron fist and an example of the new kind of global totalitarianism, where powerful Western nations police the "third world" and make political choices for the weaker nations, while keeping their own people subjugated through terror. The neo-Cons most blatantly did this with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. They did it with orange threat levels read over the radio daily, along with the weather and UV index. We saw it when our troops found the once dangerous Saddam Hussein (we helped it become dangerous) buried up to his neck in a ditch in back of his family home. And in his televised hanging. And today we saw it recorded on a cell phone, as the bloody body of the leader of Libya for over 40 years, Muammar Gaddafi, was beaten and possibly shot in the head. The UN is investigating.

Okay, Gaddafi was a bad guy, one of the worst. He oppressed masses of his own people. He may have used chemical weapons on them (I'm still researching). Like Hussein, he was a glorified gangster who killed people routinely. He was also almost certainly very nasty to women and fathered this douchebag (hey, what's he doing talking to Hillary Clinton, huh?).

He financed all of this by selling oil to Saudi Arabia, not really know for their strong history of civil rights. Of course Saudi Arabia sells oil to, uh, well if I'm not mistaken, US the United States of America. So, I guess that means oil taken from Libya (sold by an oppressive regime run by a sociopath, then sold to the Saudi gang, then sold to us) ends up in our cars. That means we've been involved, however peripherally, in Gaddafi's oppression.

Certainly, our government and industries have been involved in the Middle East for decades. For better or worse. We pay the consequences of that involvement. One interesting fact is knowing where Gaddafi's guns and bombs and tear gas came from. In this case, the answer is: Europe. Private companies in Italy, France and the UK sold lots of weapons to Gaddafi over the years. Ah, the never-ending intricacies of the Military Industrial Complex.

To paraphrase Charlie Chaplin, death to dictators and all those who make themselves strong at the expense of others.