COLONISATION OF LIBYA- 2011

In Libya, the situation is dramatic. The United States (US),European Union(EU) and the United Nations (UN) have opened a new Frontier. The so-called allies, or the white industrial nations are on a crusade to destroy an African nation whose leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, a non-conformist, is supposed to be a thorn in their flesh, because he does not want his people to live under those western racists, political, and capitalist systems , since they never set themselves the task of understanding other cultures. When African nations rejected the use of force in or the so-called no-fly zones over Libya, the US and the EU turned to those corrupt Arab Nations, whose inhuman treatment of their citizens are well documented, for help to push through a UN resolution to attack Libya. To have a common front to attack Libya, minor members countries of the United Nations, were once again been tortured into submission and threatened with sanctions if they do not vote for a resolution that will bring war to Africa. So, we now have a new western crusade in Libya.

Let's scroll back some weeks. Perhaps the most obvious place to begin is by the favourite nation of the West in North Africa, Egypt. It all started in Egypt, an African territory that was colonized by the Arabs in the seventh century, europianized from middle ages to the nineteenth century and later theorized by racist and colonial anthropologists and Egyptologists as having no connections whatsoever to Africa. Funny these colonial disciplines and their falsities. But this is western logic at its best - when it contributes to racism and ahistoricism. Now, Egypt receives over two billion dollars yearly to keep its mouth shout about Israeli atrocities in Palestine and hold other Arab nations in check in voicing out their opinions about these atrocities. So when a small group of people started demonstrating in Egypt, the first contention was that it will not last, because the Mubarak government will soon cut of the head of the snake. However, more people started demonstrating in the streets and soon, the Egyptian president was forced to resign.

A change of government? No. Just a reshuffling, because the national security interests of the US and EU stand above all issues - that is if non-whites must be oppressed for the West to have access to raw materials, resources and trading routes, then that is fair. Now these demonstrations have spread into most Arab countries forcing the dictatorship of these monarchs to make tiny changes in the political order to curb any unrest. To put it another way, the governments in these Arab countries are killing their people, for example, Qatar, Bahrain, and it seems to be in the interest of the West. No where do we hear of no-fly zones over these friendly Arab nations. Libya in contrast to Egypt and other Arab nations was and is a rebellious nation because it has devised a new ideology that stands in sharp contrast to the western notion of democracy.

In his Green Book, Gaddafi reveals the failure of parliamentary democracy. As he stated, "it is unthinkable that democracy should mean the electing of only a few representatives to act on behalf of great masses. This is an obsolete structure,”) because only the dictatorship of an elected party that wins an elections with less votes gets the mandate to rule although the other parties had more votes among themselves. That was not democracy and he thus suggested the "Popular Conferences and the People's Committees,” where people’s committees determine the development of Libya. This new national character that Libya was developing was a threat for the West, since it knows that Libya's system does not isolate the people or treat them separately from the government structures. Then came the western press, government officials and neo-conservations, all in one voice, chanting about how Libya supports terrorist world wide and hence it was an enemy of the West. This is how propaganda is made - you repeat falsehoods and repeat falsehoods until they sink in the mind and are taken as truths.

The unrest reached Libya, and you and I know that many European countries still make claims of Libya, especially Italy. You will never find much about the unrest in Libya except repetitive news coverages by western radio stations about how Gaddafi troops are killing innocent civilians. The significant part of those news coverages are that there were no pictures of people being killed although news journalists claim to be embedded with the resistance.

This is the critical point: the annexation of Libya for its oil. Iraq is already in the hands of the West. Oil rules. Libya, according to the west must be forcefully made part of the internationals system of exploitation to enable the western economies run properly without stuttering.

To understand the nature of the US, EU and UN aggression in Libya one has to take a broader framework, that is look into the definition or what constitutes colonialism. I think you will find the definition of Aimé Césaire very accurate and penetrating in what would be and is happening in Libya today. In Discourse on Colonialism (1972), he defines colonialism as follows:

What, fundamentally, is colonialism? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once for all, without flinching at the consequence, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies...that the chief culprit in this domain is Christian pedantry, which laid down the dishonest equations Christianity=civilization, paganism-savagery, from which there could not but ensue abominable colonialist and racist consequences whose victims were to be the Indians, the yellow peoples and the Negroes” (10-11).

See you in that bogus International Court of Justice.

Dr. Seth Quartey

Assistant Professor of German and Sociology. I hold masters degree in business administration, social economics and sociology from the University of Hamburg (1989) and Purdue University (1997) and a Ph.D. in German and Cultural Studies from the University of Michigan (2004).

My research interests include 19th and early 20th century German literature, German colonialism, philosophy, and dialogue. I have also done research in cross-cultural contacts and published a book Missionary Practices: Gaze, Discourse, and Gender in Pre-colonial West Africa and other academic articles. I also maintain an active research in archives for new unpublished documents on German colonialism and well as teaching courses in integration using dialogue and participation. When I am not working, I enjoy photography, hiking, philosophizing and bike riding.


Zur Zeit arbeite ich an einem interdisziplinären Projekt um neue Erkenntnisse des Zusammenslebens, Tätigkeiten Emotionen und Wertsystemen welche das leben im kolonialen Umfeld zwischen deutschen Missionaren und lokalen Bewohner an der Gold Küste bestimmten und unser heutiges Lebens und Mentalitäten ähnlichen. Wichtig ist es zu erforschen wie europäische und afrikanische Identitäten in Dialog traten und wie diese präkoloniale Kontakt durch ästhetische und kulturelle Repräsentationen instrumentalisiert wurde und deshalb in der gesamten modernen europäischen Geschichte eine Stelle einnimmt

Theories of Colonialism: German Missionary: Georg Johann Widmann (1814-1876). Auszuege aus dem Tagebuch. By Seth Quartey

Theories of Colonialism: German Missionary: Georg Johann Widmann (1814-1876). Auszuege aus dem Tagebuch. By Seth Quartey