Background on Libya

Admit it or not, we in the United States live in a kind of a vacuum, an American vacuum created by dealing with our local concerns, and even our self importance. This living in mental isolation is so strong that the rest of the world hardly even is considered to exist. Add in the attractions of a hundred cable channels, video games, smart phones and the lack of any deep education about the rest of the world when growing up and you’ve pretty much got an invisible wall around the U.S. Plus, those other places are so far away, aren’t they?

To Europe, Libya and Tunisia are close by. In fact, part of Italy almost touches northern Tunisia. The problems of north Africa and the middle east spread quickly to Europe and they have millions of immigrants from the region living in their cities. As a result, they get better news coverage of international events than we do and regular people expect to understand some of the history and background of what happens. Can you imagine?

Here is a short clip from the Guardian newspaper of England in regard to events prior to the current revolt in Libya, followed by a link to their site:

 Libyans trudged through nearly 42 years of arbitrary and destructive policies, ever mindful of the vigilant eye of Gaddafi's brutal security apparatus. People who were even faintly critical disappeared. Opposition figures were hunted down worldwide and assassinated – the stray dogs of Libya, as the regime referred to them. Siblings informed on each other. University students were forced to watch the execution of their fellow students on campus. People were questioned if they were out of the country for long. Frequent worshippers at mosques were picked up and "rehabilitated". Wounded soldiers returning from the Chad war were thrown from airplanes over Libya's vast desert to conceal the extent of losses suffered by the Libyan army. Thousands of political prisoners were exterminated in the infamous Abu Salim massacre in 1996.

Following the ousting of Saddam in 2003, Gaddafi was quick to recognise that a shift was necessary on the international front if he was to avoid a similar fate and keep his grip on the country's resources and wealth. He renounced terrorism, paid $2.7bn in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie bombing, set up a$1.5bn fund to compensate the victims of Libya's bombing of a Berlin disco in 1986 and a French UTA airliner in 1989, and dismantled his programme for weapons of mass destruction. His turnaround was welcomed by the west and, one by one, western leaders made their way to Gaddafi's tent in the desert and came away with business deals worth billions of dollars.

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