Reflections on the Life and Death of Muammar Gaddafi

The circumstances of his shameful death outside the rule of law bode ill for the humanity's chances of escaping the self-suicide of global warfare.

Salem-News.com

(LETHBRIDGE, Alberta) - I first learned of Gaddafi from friends in the American Indian Movement of North America. The scholarly and generous Gaddafi offered these folks and their justice struggle help, both in terms of resources and in terms of lending legitimacy to their cause.

Over the years Gaddafi often educated me when I heard his recorded speeches about Israel, decolonization, Dimona, Obama, pan-Africanism, the assassination of JFK and such.

My friend Cynthia McKinney, who I continue to see as one of the great Americans and great global humanists of our generation, spoke well of his regime.

So did Thierry Meyssen and Canadian Michel Chossudovsky, both formidable intellectuals who I refuse to see as dupes.

Was Gaddafi angelic in every way. Certainly not. Did he scheme and plot out of self-preservation among the criminal clubs that rule our nations, banks and war machines. I am sure he did as Gordon Duff so vehemently insists.

But there is that other part of him that inspired me; that helped me imagine a time when empire building and colonization by the racist West would be transcended.

It saddens me to see Gaddafi assassinated by compradors among his own people in much the same way that was visited on Pontiac, Sitting Bull, Patrice Lumumba, Oscar Romera, Salvador Allende, and Malcolm X. I grieve for his family.

I have sorrow for the degraded pseudo-leadership of my own society who backed his vigilante-style murderers.

The circumstances of his shameful death outside the rule of law bode ill for the humanity's chances of escaping the self-suicide of global warfare.

Imagine how much he would have exposed of the corruption that rules over us if he had had the opportunity of defending himself in a court of law.

Anthony J. Hall is a Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge, a public university in the liberal arts tradition, located in Alberta, Canada.

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