Poverty is a huge moral problem.

We have enough global wealth to feed, house and clothe everyone. Despite all our talk of civilising Judeo-Christian values, which call on us to help one another especially the poor, the richest 84 people have the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people on the globe.

Authors like Susan George "A Fate Worse than Debt" and John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" spell out the role of western governments, bankers and corporations (corporatocracy) in saddling developing nations with debt.

They describe building infrastructure that is not designed to be used by local people, but is designed to help multinationals to extract local resources more easily - such as nuclear power plants, hydro-electric plants, roads, ports.

More-over these countries then use Western corporations to build these projects, rather than local companies. Once saddled with these white elephant projects, the country defaults as the projects never create as much wealth as projected, and the IMF comes in and demands austerity for social spending such as health and education, while privatising utilities such as water. Funnily enough, military spending is often excluded from austerity cuts.

What is even worse is that if we can't corrupt local government we then put military pressure on them to do our bidding, many leaders have paid the ultimate price for being uncorruptable, like:
Mossedegh in Iran, CIA coup deposed him in 1953
Allende in Chile, killed in CIA backed coup, 1973
Omar Torrijos in Panama, CIA killed him in plane crash, 1981
Jaime Roldos in Equador, died in mysterious plane (?CIA) crash, 1981
The list goes on, and on, so I won't bore you.

What all these men had in common was that they stood up to western corporations and defended their national sovereignty, and they all paid the price.

When those in the corporatocracy have so much to gain from extracting wealth from the rest of us, the only real way we can hope to solve the poverty problem is to find a way to civilise them into behaving like good corporate citizens.

From the article: "Poverty is not merely a policy issue, but a multifarious discourse that requires a holistic approach to addressing."

A holistic approach requires consideration of all factors. Correlation does not mean causation. The correlation may be caused by another factor. In general poverty correlates with religiosity. The article did not mention religion. The US is cited as an example which does not apply. However, in the US the poorest states are generally the most religious.

Is religiosity the expression of people in a bad way hoping for something better or is it a cause of being in a bad way? I suspect it is both.

Religion may encourage resignation to a bad situation which is a barrier to change. Religion can also act against the acceptance of science and technology that might help the situation.

The Ebola epidemic has apparently ended in Liberia. During the epidemic sufferers were brought into churches for others to lay their hands on the sufferers. That was effective in spreading the disease. Now that the epidemic is over people are not returning to the churches. They are apparently aware of the harm religion can do in getting people to ignore the medical advice which to isolate sufferers.

Yes mate it's a massive challenge! We've often talked about a Tobin tax; which would nonetheless raise billions!

But where would that lead and who would manage the fund?

Some of the corruption is endemic, and only able to be avoid by the NGO bypassing some of the government or Government instrumentality.

Which all to often turns our largess into guns and bullets, to perpetrate local conflict or control?

I'm very much in favor of micro loans and putting local womenfolk in charge of the resources purchased by this money and indeed repaying it.

And given said loan for any worthwhile purpose, say for a buffalo and a plow is fully repaid, another loan could then be managed to allow the purchase of something else (a few bicycles/a motorized rotary hoe that doubles as the motive power that pulls a trailer, that transports harvest to market/foot operated sewing machines/solar panels/solar powered pump/drill a new well) that improves the lot of the family, or village enterprise!

Or just provide light for a night school, the only time some of these folks can lay down their tools and take a little time to study!

And with each small improvement, improve the lot of everyone, the way Kenya's reafforestation and replacement of expensive imported oil did, with an endlessly sustainable resource; to improve their ability to produce coffee and its export!

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life!

Effectively end or bypass the corruption and you end the poverty that causes! And that takes enormous enduring courage and completely committed indigenous on the ground enablers/NGO!

And the best ones are usually the women who have successfully used and repaid their own micro loans to improve their lot/independence and those of the family/friends or village!

Meaning a relatively modest fund can be used again and again, and as hand ups, rather than handouts that then results in total dependence on endless soul destroying charity!
Rhrosty.

Yes BJelly, apparently the CIA rather than irrational (hate masquerading as) religion are responsible for all the ills of the entire world, not local dictators or Rwandan/Cambodian style genocide/Jihad!

And while you assert that what you claim is true, you offer not so much as a single shred of actual evidence!

Which turns most of what you allege into pure blame deflecting propaganda/Male bovine manure, but only for the moribund minds/cannon fodder, that stupidly swallow it!?

You'll have a nice day now, y'hear.
Rhrosty.

Hi Rhosty, here is some evidence for you of CIA involvement in coups

from the NSA archive, admission of CIA involvement in Iran coup that toppled Mossedegh: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/#_ftn1

CIA own documents about their involvement in Allende coup in Chile and operation Condor
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/#_ftn1

The Church Commmittee's report into CIA involvement in Chile
http://fas.org/irp/ops/policy/church-chile.htm

There is quite a bit of reading there, but I can find more if you like about other coups. I would also recommend John Perkins book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
Here is a link to an interview of his
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWuAct1BxHU

I'm not saying the corporatocracy is the only cause of death and destruction, and evil in the world but it is one part of it. It would be ridiculous to say they are the only ones causing trouble, but they are our bad guys, if we have a real democracy and sovereignty, we should be able to curb their excesses.

Sorry, here is the link to CIA's own admission of involvement in Chile coup (although denying direct involvement with Allende's death)
Sorry, I put up incorrect link before.

There are also admissions about Operation Condor
https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/chile/

Poverty is insoluble unless those in receipt of aid start doing something for themselves. History clearly shows this. All the billions put into it only tinkers around the edges.

One thing good about the budget was the reduction in foreign aid, although it should have been cut completely. This useless rip off merely removes money from the poorer in a 'rich' country, and gives it to the rich in poor countries; not to mention the salaries and administration costs of those Australians constantly on TV saying that we are too mean.

If poverty stricken people abroad and at home haven't yet worked how to do something for themselves with all the aid they have had, it's unfortunate, but it's time to cut them off.

Most of us don't ask rich people to give us money because they have more than we do. It should the same with poor countries expecting rich countries to hand over money.

This might sound hard, but I've read enough books and literature by sensible people in third would countries begging the world to stop giving aid so that their people can start looking after themselves.

ttbn, foreign aid does not remove money from the poorer in rich countries. The government could easily double foreign aid spending without leaving Australia's poor any worse off at all.

The claim that foreign aid's merely giving to the rich in poor countries is also wrong. It's spent on specific projects that benefit everyone there, not just the rich.

Your claim that "Poverty is insoluble unless those in receipt of aid start doing something for themselves" is based on a false assumption. If you remove the false assumption, it would become "Poverty WOULD BE insoluble IF those in receipt of aid STOPPED doing something for themselves".

Your statement that "If poverty stricken people abroad and at home haven't yet worked how to do something for themselves with all the aid they have had..." suggests that you're under the illusion that we're just handing out money to people. That's not how aid works.

Most of us don't ask rich people to give us money, but do (rightly) want richer people to pay more taxes than they do, and want the government to spend at least part of the revenue on things that benefit the poor and help them to become rich sooner. It's the same principle with countries, but the lack of an international government controlling the money means it's all voluntary and it's much easier for countries to weasel out of commitments.

I suggest you read some more dissenting books, but failing that you should more carefully consider the arguments of those you have read. For there have been problems with some countries dumping subsidized products and calling it "aid". But that's got nothing to do with the real aid that Australia gives. Our aid doesn't prevent countries (or people) from doing anything for themselves, and I don't think it ever did.

Having said that, there are more things that we should do to encourage self reliance. As long as we announce it well in advance, I'd be in favour of denying development aid to those countries that fix their currency to the US dollar (or any other foreign currency).

Aidan,

You and I will never see eye to on anything, and that's fine with me.

If only do-gooders would get the hell out these problems & places conditions would improve much more quickly.

Most of them are no worse than Europe was in the middle ages. Events like the potato blight famine killed millions in Ireland, but did cure their overpopulation problem, allowing the survivors to develop more successfully.

Band aid supported millions, allowing them to continue to breed & multiply in countries way past their carrying capacity. The real question is not did it help, but how much worse did it make the future for those concerned.

People have to want to improve their lot, & giving handouts, like sit down money for aboriginals, merely makes things worse long term. They need to be left to their own efforts to develop their own destiny. Continually bailing people out of their self developed failures, only teaches that failure has no consequence. To help, long term requires they be left to learn the hard way, the way we have.

There is some woolly thinking in this article. It is excessively negative. It focuses only on failures, and does not acknowledge the enormous gains in fighting poverty in recent decades. According to the Millennium Development Goals Report, “the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has been halved at the global level [between 1990 and 2010]; over 2 billion people gained access to improved sources of drinking water; and remarkable gains have been made in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis”. We are close to achieving the Millennium target of halving the number of people suffering from hunger.

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/mdg/the-millennium-development-goals-report-2013/

I’m no Pollyanna – there are still hundreds of millions living in acute poverty and suffering malnutrition. But large-scale poverty reduction takes decades, it can't happen overnight. In the course of less than three decades our rate of progress has been remarkable, and deserves to be acknowledged.

Instead of just focussing on causes of failure, it may be valuable to also look at causes of success in countries that have succeeded in reducing poverty sharply. The most dramatic success has been in south and east Asia, most notably in China where absolute poverty rates have fallen from 60% to 12%.

Aid policies or governance programs don’t seem to be the decisive factors in poverty reduction. I suspect that it’s more important to have government with a strong focus on growth, an export-led growth strategy, a willingness to exploit comparative advantage based initially on low wages, and high domestic savings to support investment (contrary to the article’s claim, foreign investment contributed little to China’s growth, though it was probably more important in other Asian success stories like Hong Kong and Singapore).

Judging by the countries that have actually succeeding in reducing poverty substantially in recent decades, aid seems not to have been a decisive factor. Aid can still make a difference, and is certainly important in alleviating the effects of poverty and natural disasters, but economic fundamentals predominate

IMHO where one should start in fighting poverty is to promote zero or negative population growth. Educate girls so they consider themselves other than future baby-making machines and have other options. Provide adequate health care so people will not have many children in hopes that some will survive. The above can be hard to do since religion and culture may oppose it.

Poverty is insoluble in many third world societies because people and cultures are not equal.

The western world became the most prosperous in the world because the North European Protestant people were a generally intelligent race who were the first to realise the benefit of making governments secular, and to prefer scientific methodology over superstition.

Many of us old enough to remember know that the Asian people were once poorer than the Muslims are today. But the Asians, who are even generally more intelligent than the white North Europeans, are now becoming the leading economic forces in the world. Amazingly, they did it all by themselves without the endless aid money which will forever flow into Africa. Communist China was once extremely poor, but since it has finally given up on the Socialist religion and embraced free market thinking, it has become the second largest economy in the world.

Prosperity and poverty is very closely related to intellect. Smart people and smart cultures are prosperous, and dumb people with dumb cultures are poor. What is more, is that dumb people breed a lot faster than smart people, so the idea of ending poverty is a pipe dream.

One can only wonder at what the world would look like if the Asians had the oilfields of the Arabs? But even with their oilfields, the Arabs and the Muslims generally are going nowhere. Their Muslim faith is the primary impediment to their advancement although their apparent lack of intelligence seems to be another factor. It is just like the stories we hear of dumb lottery winners blowing all their money in a few years of profligate spending and ending back on the dole.

As for black people generally, sadly, their generally very low levels of intelligence have condemned them to poverty forever. 60 years of UN aid have and western dole money simply made them dependent on that money and their populations continue to grow beyond control. Their only hope is to get on a boat and get into a western country where they will become a crime and welfare problem forever.

Most of these people are so poor because they are too damn bone idle to get off the butt to do anything but breed.

I get so annoyed when I see these con job aid agencies showing the great work they are doing with the millions they collect from simple minded, if very kind people, & our government.

One of their favourites is a bunch of laughing kids, pumping water from a borehole they have provided, with a hand pump. The idea is we have saved the world with clean water.

If you can pump water with a hand pump, it is from a shallow water table, no more than 32Ft deep maximum to the pump head. It is a simple task for anyone to dig a well to get that water.

I had dug 2 of those before I was 11 years old, me digging down the hole & my father pulling the dirt up in a bucket. In 40s & 50s Oz, if you lived even a mile or so out of town, & wanted water, you dug a well. You still do in most of rural Oz today.

In my area 800 homes have tanks & wells or bores, or no water. Most of Oz is the same for us if you are not aboriginal on an out station. Once we have supplied all Oz citizens with clean water, & a lot of other things city folk take for granted, it will be time to look to what we can do for anyone.

Hi Hasbeen,

If the Africans were allowed to extract and gain wealth from their own resources they would be wealthy. However the resources and wealth of Africa are extracted by mulinational corporations with the support of military (Military Industrial Complex). And if Africans fight back they get killed.

Remember how Gina Rinehart was saying we are competing against miners in Africa working for $2 a day? Well, we saw in the 2012 Marikana killings in South Africa, what happens when they demand better wages, 34 were shot, many in the back, by the police.

Remember what happened with Shell in Nigeria? When people protested they were killed, including the writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa who hanged by the military dicatorship in 1995.

Remember Gaddafi? He took one of Africa's poorest countries in the 1970s and made it Africa's wealthiest country. It was debt free with billions in reserve, until he was killed in 2011. Now it is a failed state. That is what happens if you defy the corporatocracy - your country gets bombed to save it - we call it humanitarian intervention (Responsibility to Protect). Then its previously nationalised resources are ripe for corporations to take them over.

We haven't learnt how to bomb people into democracy, but we have learnt we can use military action to free up resources, and our humanitarian zeal suddenly disappears.

One third of Libyans have fled since our humanitarian intervention. We just want them to go back. We don't want to know about the hell we unleashed. The Eu and US did however, take billions of dollars of Libya's wealth to keep in trust.

"LIA had deposited $32 billion in U.S. banks...February 28, the U.S. Treasury “froze” these accounts. According to official statements, this is “the largest sum ever blocked in the United States,” which Washington held “in trust for the future of Libya.” It will in fact serve as an injection of capital into the U.S. economy, which is more and more in debt. A few days later, the EU “froze” around 45 billion Euros of Libyan funds."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/financial-heist-of-the-century-confiscating-libya-s-sovereign-wealth-funds-swf/24479

Hi Hasbeen.

Like you, I can only cringe at the "logic" of BJelly. I know he is directing his attack on you, but I saw him first, so I get first crack at him.

To begin with, BJelly, Africans are lucky to find any investor stupid enough to invest in their dysfunctional, corrupt, and violent societies. Mining companies prefer stable democracies like Australia to invest their billions. The last thing they want is to have their investments "nationalised" (another word for "stolen") like that which occurred in Chile and Iran. The Africans can't do it themselves, because they are too backward and dysfunctional and they always will be. They need outside help so that the resource can be exploited and then they can fight and kill each other over who gets the royalties. See the example of oil rich South Sudan right now.

Oh and I remember Ghaddafi. He was a complete crackpot who managed to murder his way to the top in Libya, and he dressed up in outfits that would make even Michael Jackson cringe. He became top dog in Libya and gave the place some stability which was a good thing for investors, because most of these third world cesspits are so dysfunctional and tribal that they can't even build roads without importing a bunch of Vietnamese road builders. He drowned his country in imported weaponry which is now in the hands of every Jihadi slave owner terrorist group in Africa.

Khadafy decided to start a proxy war with Europe by supporting every terrorist group in Europe from the IRA, to the Red Brigades, and the Baader-Meinhoff gang. He went too far when he used his agents to bomb and kill US citizens in commercial airliners and in nightclubs, so the yanks put an airstrike on Tripoli using carriers and F-111's out of RAF Lossiemouth. That scared the ever lovin' shiit out of him and he behaved himself from then on. But he ran out of friends when his own people turned on him and the Euros were happy to help his own people kill him.

Hi Lego,

Gaddafi was no saint, but his government proved that Africans could rule themselves successfully. Prior to our "liberation", Libya was a wealthy independent African nation. It was able to extract its own resources and shared the wealth among the people. It was gave humanitarian aid to other African countries.

Libya was a secular Muslim majority country where women could vote, study, work. There was subsidized housing, free childcare, free healthcare, free education, even free electricity. I'm sure there were things that could have been improved, but I think even you would have to agree, that sounds like a pretty good deal.

1/3 of the population have fled since 2011 - that tells you how bad it is now. But when was the last time you heard a Libyan voice in the media? When did the media ever say that Libya was the wealthiest African country before we liberated it? I know I didn't find out from our media. Check it out.
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Africa/Libya-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html

Gaffafi's biggest crime, was not co-operating with the corporatocracy. Gaddafi wanted to create a Pan African coalition, and move away from trading in US dollars. (As did Iraq, Iran, and North Korea - this was the link between the so called "axis" of evil - they were never an axis - that implies an alliance - there was certainly no alliance between Iran and Iraq!) If countries start to trade in currencies other than the US dollar - the US is stuffed. Read up about petrodollars.

The West's closest buddy in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia a country that is an absolute monarchy. However, they have allowed the privatization of assets and services. Between 12-25%of Saudis live below the poverty line. Women are required to wear the black abaya. People are beheaded - I believe 80 or so this year so far. Some for the "crimes" of sorcery and apostacy. It has funded Wahhabi Islam worldwide - it is recognized as the biggest supporter of Islamic terrorism in the world - and yet we don't bomb them - we sell arms to them. Weird huh?

Have you ever picked up a history book in your entire life, BJelly?

Libya in the early 19th century was just like Somalia is today, a country of pirates and slave traders who preyed upon western shipping entering the Mediterranean Sea. There predations were so bad, that even the British paid them off to stop them from attacking British ships and selling the crews and passengers into slavery.

It became an Italian colony and that was a god thing because the Ities are pretty good people, and they could not treat the locals any worse than the tribal leaders or the mullahs did.

Ghaddafi did not make the Libyans wealthy, the west did. For millennia, the Libyans had been plagued by a black, oily substance polluting their ground water wells. It was western civilisation which created the technology to create kerosene out of oil, and invent the kerosene lantern, the internal combustion engine, cars and aeroplanes. Suddenly, the Libyans realised that the black stuff they had been cursing for centuries was valuable.

Ghadaffi was in a enviable position for a military dictator. He had a country with boundless wealth and a very small population, so he could afford to pay off the entire population with freebies and keep them happy. But the idiot got grand designs and started supporting terrorist organisations in Europe. The wimpy Euros put up with it only because they needed Libyan oil.

And every tin pot Arab leader boasts about creating a pan Arab coalition. But will never get it because they can't stop fighting each other to become the top dog. They should rename the Suez canal "The Canal of Pan Arab Dreams". Because it goes from nowhere to nowhere.

How you can think that Ghadaffi was some sort of visionary is absolutely incredible. You only have to look at the getups he got around in and his harem done up in military uniforms to figure out very quickly that he was a complete fruitcake.

Hi Lego,

While I have read history books, I'm no expert. I don't claim to have answers, mostly questions - I'm curious about how the world works.

Thanks for bringing up the history of oil, I would have thought it was only western technology that made use of it, but apparently the Chinese were drilling for oil in 347 AD. In the 9th century, Azerbaijan oilfields were being exploited. In the 12th century Arab and Persian chemists distilled oil, which was exported to Western Europe. However, you are right is was Western technology that transformed crude oil to make paraffin, kerosene and petroleum.

Thanks also for bringing up the Italian occupation. I knew nothing of it, but it was not quite as nice as you made out. 225,000 indigenous Libyans were killed by the Italians who committed war crimes such as using illegal chemical weapons, mass executions of civilians and lots more. The Italians also expelled nearly 1/2 the Bedouin population so their land could be given to Italian settlers. Many were forced into concentration camps, of the 100,000 internees that went into the camps, 40,000 died.

I'm no apologist for Gaddafi - yes, he looked strange. He was probably a horrible human being - most people like him are. But I don't think he deserved to be killed the way he was - for a man who made sure his people were housed, clothed and fed he died a cruel death, it was a war crime.

And I certainly think the Libyan people deserved more from us. We bombed their country, stole their wealth. and now we have turned our backs on them and their suffering - it is inhuman. They are fleeing a civil war we started, yet we claim no responsibility. Nice.

The thing is under Gaddafi, it is a fact, Libya became a wealthy nation. He came from humble beginnings. While Gaddafi became wealthy, he ensured that the nation's wealth was shared among its people. He deserves credit for that don't you think?

BTW I spoke of a Pan African not Pan Arab coalition.

Hi BJelly

The world works like this.

The history of the world
Reveals a simple plan
H takes who has the power
He holds, who can.

Your little spiel pretended that the poor Libyans were just a bunch of nice guys who were siting around communing with nature, eating lotus leaves, and leaving the rest of the world alone. They were anything but. They were a nation of pirates and slave traders, not unlike seaborne versions of ISIS today. Among your statistics showing just how awful those nasty Italians treated them, you forgot to mention how many European ships they captured, and how many passengers and crews were murdered, raped, or sold into slavery.

When the Libyans attacked and captured two US merchant ships, President Jefferson sent the Libyan Pasha a polite note asking why the Libyans had attacked the ships of a new and neutral nation that had done it no harm? The Pasha replied something like "Because you are just infidels and we are Believers, so you are our slaves." "Pay up, or we will attack your ships."

Jefferson sent the fledgling US navy and Marines to attack Libya and give those damned Muslim barbarians a taste of their own medicine.. He said something like 'We Americans prefer war to any form of tribute, whatsoever." You remember the US Marine Hymn? "From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli?"

It's funny how you can only see third worlders as victims, never aggressors. It is a characteristic of you incredible mindset. Tthe Italians did civilisation a favour by invading the place, shooting the pirates, slave traders and mullahs, and civilising the place. It is too bad they don't do the same thing in Somalia today and end piracy in that important area once and for all. Today, we are more concerned with the Human Rights of pirates to do what is practical and just hang them.

continued

continued

You also forgot to mention that Libya supplied arms to the IRA which killed British soldiers. A member of the Libyan embassy in London shot and killed a British policewoman from the embassy grounds, which is a perfect illustration of how barbaric and crazy these Libyan nutters are. Ghaddafi was involved in the Lockerbie bombing, which killed hundreds of US and Scottish people, and it was Ghaddafi's agents who were bombed a German nightclub and put a bomb on a US airliner which killed two US women. Then you wonder why the Euros hated Ghadaffi.

The Libyans were lucky that the USA did not turn all of Libya into a giant sheet of glass, while the Euros cheered them on. But the yanks did bomb Ghaddafi and unfortunately, they did not kill him. But you hero Ghaddaffi suddenly realised that he was not immortal and the yanks could get him if they wanted to, so he decided to behave himself. The rebellion by his own people against his regime was something you can't blame on the yanks or the Euros, it looks like his own people did not think as much about him as you do. He died in the gutter at the hands of his own people which was what he deserved.

Lastly, we get to your assertion that the west 'stole Libya's oil." How is inventing the internal combustion engine, creating a resource from what the Libyans once thought of as a pollutant, building oil fields and refineries in Libya, and buying Libyan oil at OPEC prices, theft?

One wonders what would have happened if the Israel had the oil that Libya has? Israel would be the richest nation on earth and the leader in scientific research. But no amount of oil money can do anything for the Arab Muslims. Like lower class lottery winners, they will spend it all and then be back on the dole.

Lego,

I can't claim to know if Libyans are worse or better people than the rest of us, but I suspect most of them are normal people wanting to live their lives in peace. I expect they liked having stable jobs, houses to live in, food to eat, a stable government, and a welfare system to help them in bad times. I think the fact that 1/3 of the population have left since our "humanitarian" intervention says something.

Maybe they are more like you say and they enjoy being surrounded by murderous thugs with no rule of law? No safety and no future for their children. Is that what they deserve?

Lego I don't understand your argument that Libyans using oil refining technology etc is stealing. Science and technology doesn't belong to the nation which invented it. Technology is shared. How can it possibly be wrong for people to exploit their own natural wealth? I think foreign companies who gain access to wealth from exploiting natural resources, without giving proper compensation to the people of that country, by corrupting or threatening governments are the immoral ones.

I don't know about Gaddafi's connection with the IRA, Libyan embassy shooting and Lockerbie bombing. I think there are some who question the official stories about the embassy shooting and the bombing. Being a military leader he no doubt committed terrible crimes, but like you say, that didn't stop the west being friends with him when it suited them.

What did stop everything was when he took steps to use gold backed Dinars (a single African currency) to trade oil. That was what sealed his fate. Terrorism is one thing, but you don't mess with the bankers. The US wouldn't take that - they are the world's biggest debtor nation. Their economy unravels if it isn't propped up artificially by petrodollars and military force.

I take no joy in it, as all of us are in danger of experiencing poverty not seen in living memory if the global banking system goes kaput.
Check out this article about the possible demise of the Petrodollar.
https://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/demise-petrodollar

Gee, BJelly. If you don't know much about Ghaddafi's role in arming the IRA, the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhoff gang, the bombing of US Airliners, the murder of PC Evonne Fletcher in London, and the bombing of German nightclubs hosting US troops, then you don't know much about your "hero."

The Libyan people are Muslims, and such people have been inculcated at birth to think more about the afterlife than worrying too much about the present. They want the wealth of the western world but their religion forbids them to use their brains to obtain it. They have been inculcated since birth to think that they the Chosen people of God and everybody else is an untermenschen. They are incapable of figuring out that all of their woes are caused by their stupid religion, because criticising or even trying to improve Islam is Apostasy, and apostates are murdered.

It was hoped in the west that the "Arab Spring" might be something like the Polish "Solidarity" movement which saw the collapse of International Socialism in Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the weakening of the USSR to the point of economic collapse. We hoped that the Arabs might come to their senses once they had overthrown the nut jobs like Ghaddafi and their mullahs, and instigated something resembling democratic freedoms. That is why we helped the Libyans get rid of that nut job Ghaddafi. But we are dealing with Muslims, and they don't think like Europeans. The Egyptians even voted in a fundamentalist Muslim government that wanted to turn Egypt into an Islamic republic like Iran. Smart huh?

All the "Arab Spring" resulted in was more instability, more tribalism, more religious persecution, more fundamentalism, and Jihad. Don't blame the west for that. They just can't get over their stupid superstitions and all they want to do is to kill each other off, and everybody else who gets in the way. Muslims are a problem everywhere, and we don't want them in our countries causing trouble anymore.

This is an insightful article by this author

It would go a long way to stopping a lot of this
misery, war and poverty in the world, if World Aid was
spent immediately, on providing medical clinics, that provide
contraception free, in lieu of aid money, for women
Aid should go directly there and not to male leaders.

Until I see male leaders in the United Nations stand up and demand
this, I do not think they can blame the West for the miserable
hellholes they have created for themselves, and their women and children.

It should have been done 40years ago, at least, with the means of
contraception that has been available and the amount of aid that has been poured into a lot of these troubled countries.

Oh look, it's the big white elephant. Can't you see it.

Hi Lego,

Please stop misrepresenting what I've said. I've never said Gaddafi was my hero. He was a political leader, and like many political leaders he did things I find abhorrent. And if there was real justice he and many other world leaders would spend a long time behind bars.

It doesn't shock me that he may have been involved in terrorism. Some of our closest allies (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) are known to be the biggest supporters of global Islamic terrorism, but we fund and sell arms to them? Why is that?

The CIA funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. At the time many women were studying and working it was secular, but occupied by the Soviets (communists). How did that work out? It produced Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Taliban taking power. After the US's longest ever occupation, it is now a narco state at risk of civil war.

Then we invaded Iraq - Iraq was a secular Ba'athist state with nationalised oil, women could work and study. By the time we finished it was a failed state with a civil war , Al Qaeda was present and ISIS was formed there.

We invaded Libya, secular Islamic state, women could work and study, nationalised oil. Result failed state, civil war and ISIS present.

In Syria, we supported "moderates" eg Al Nusra front - listed terrorist organisation. Syria was a secular state where women could study and work, with many nationalised assets. Now suffering civil war. ISIS there.

I think there is a pattern here - we aren't going after states, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, even though they both have terrible human rights records and are known to support fundamentalist Islamists. The key is they have undergone "economic liberalization" so no need to invade - corporations can already access their wealth.

The West has spent billions even trillions bringing "freedom and democracy" to the Middle East, but we only seem to bring death and terror to millions of civilians.

It's not the people who are being "liberated", it's their wealth.

Dear CHERFUL,

You wrote: "Oh look, it's the big white elephant. Can't you see it."

A white elephant is a gift that is a burden. Perhaps you mean the elephant in the room.

Supply of contraceptives does not mean they will be used. Without changes in a society so that women can get an education and see worth in themselves besides being makers of babies supply of contraceptives will make no difference.

To BJelly.

You praised Ghaddafi and said that he was a person who had given his people free this, and free that, and it was terrible that the west was instrumental in ending his regime and killing him. Now that I have told you what you were too ignorant to know, you are trying to disown him. Oh, and by the way, the reason why the Euros supported the Libyan people against Ghaddafi, was because Ghaddafi was winning with his African mercenary troops and he promised to exterminate everybody who had fought against him. You might be smart enough to know what he meant by that.

I know that understanding the Byzantine nature of Middle Eastern politics is beyond you, but I will try and educate you out of your continued ignorance. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are not allies of the west, they are our enemies. Saudi school textbooks tell their kids "all infidels are your enemies" which is why the 9/11 bombers in New York were all Saudis doing what the Saudi education system had brainwashed them to do.

The Taliban is a creation of Pakistan. That was why the yanks told the Pakkis to "choose sides" when they invaded (liberated?) Afghanistan. The Pakkis have been playing a double game all along, pretending to help the Allies in exchange for money and arms while helping the Pashtuns to fight the Europeans. Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan in full view of the Pakistan military who were obviously protecting him. But the whole thing blew up in the Pakkis faces. The Pashtun monster that they created is now so strong that Waziristan is now effectively a separate state. The Pakkis tried to re establish Pakistan government control in Waziristan using the Pakistan Army and the Taliban and Al Qaida threw them out. The Pashtuns even had a "victory parade" to celebrate their victory over "their" own government's army.

Continued

Hi Lego,
I deplore any abuses of human rights. I admire that he seemed to care for his people and made sure that they had homes, access to food, health and education. Not many leaders do that anymore. I can walk and chew gum so to speak. Because I admire one part of his legacy doesn't mean I have to admire everything about him. I'm not sure why that is so hard for you to understand. I admit I need to find out more about his past, so maybe I will spend time doing that.
Cheers!

To BJelly

It took over 200,000 years for the world's population to reach 1 billion. Another 123 to reach 2 billion. Today human population stands at 7.2 billion with another billion added every 12-14 years. Most of this population explosion comes from third world countries which are already very poor. First world countries would have negative population changes if not for immigration.

By what logic do you hold successful (rich) societies responsible for the increases in population in the very poor countries? Haven't we been telling them for decades to get their populations under control? If you want to blame somebody for world pioverty, you would be better off directing you ire at the Catholic Church, the cultural values of cultures which still insist on having very large numbers of offspring, and the intelligence levels of blacks who refuse to use condoms because they think that the whites are trying to stop blacks from breeding.

Your arguments about the CIA and bankers being responsible for world poverty is lunacy. German bankers lent Greece squillions of dollars which Greece who's leaders were totally corrupt and knew that they would already be retired to their retreats on Corfu when the time came to pay the Germans back. If you lend somebody a million and he can't pay it back, he has a real problem. But if the banks lend somebody hundreds of billions, then it is the bank which has the problem.

Throughout modern history, corrupt politicians in very poor countries have always claimed that they would end poverty by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. Every post colonial dictator in Africa, the Middle East, and South America sang from the same song sheet. They all tried socialism and it always failed. It never worked. Sometimes the Americans were sucessful in helping the more intelligent people within these countries to get rid of the idiot dictators like Allende who had made a bad economy within an already hideously overpopulated country even worse. Sometimes the yanks failed, as in Iran, and the loonies kept control of the overpopulated asylum.

david f <Supply of contraceptives does not mean they will be used. Without changes in a society so that women can get an education and see worth in themselves besides being makers of babies supply of contraceptives will make no difference.>

I agree,
Perhaps that is why a lot of the male leaders in religious
countries are against women and girls getting an education.
They wish to keep control of women's fertility. Again the
ball is in the court of the male leaders to do something about it.
But as is well known, men don't bring about these kind of constructive societal changes preferring to assert male domination
over female fertility. It is all about sexual power with them.

In the worst poverty,often war torn areas in the world, they actively prevent girls getting an education to the point of killing them
or throwing acid over them.

These countries shouldn't expect the Western countries who long ago implemented these
changes in women's education and contraception to take in the
refugees fleeing from countries
where the male leaders refuse to be told. I resent those male
leaders in the United Nations standing up there and blaming
the West and Europe for their own refusal to see that the
problems of poverty and human misery, rest soley with them.

A world population of 7billion people testifies to a lack of
common sense and understanding that men have in keeping the world
at a sustainable population, women would therefore be better
suited to being given the power to govern their own lives and bodies and in
so doing put an end to the huge burden of overpopulation that
is causing so much poverty,war and grief in the world.