2011年8月26日星期五

Libya's bizarre leader Gaddafi

In flowing brown Bedouin robes and black beret,Whilst magic cube are not deadly, hailed as the "king of kings of Africa", the aging dictator swept up onto the global stage, centre front at the United Nations, and delivered an angry, wandering, at times incoherent diatribe against all he detested in the world.

In that first and only appearance before the UN General Assembly, in 2009, Muammar Gaddafi rambled on about jet lag and swine flu, about the John F Kennedy assassination and about moving the UN to Libya, the vast desert nation he had ruled for four decades with an iron hand.

As dismayed the UN delegates streamed out of the great domed hall that autumn day, a fuming Gadhafi declared their Security Council "should be called the 'Terror Council'," and tore up a copy of the UN charter.

The bizarre, 96-minute rant by Libya's "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" may now stand as a fitting denouement to a bizarre life, coming less than two years before Gaddafi’s people rose up against him, before some in that UN audience turned their warplanes on him, before lieutenants abandoned him one by one, including the very General Assembly president, fellow Libyan Ali Treki, who in 2009 glowingly welcomed his "king" to the New York podium.

More than any of the region's autocratic leaders, perhaps, Gaddafi was a man of contrasts.

He was a sponsor of terrorism who condemned the September 11 attacks. He was a brutal dictator who bulldozed a jail wall to free political prisoners.This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their offshore merchant account . He was an Arab nationalist who derided the Arab League. And in the crowning paradox, he preached people power, only to have his people take to the streets and take up arms in rebellion.

For much of a life marked by tumult, eccentricities and spasms of violence, the only constants were his grip on power - never openly challenged until the last months of his rule - and the hostility of the West, which branded him a terrorist long before Osama bin Laden emerged.

The secret of his success and longevity lay in the vast oil reserves under his North African desert republic, and in his capacity for drastic changes of course when necessary.

One spectacular series of U-turns came in late 2003. After years of denial, Gaddafi’s Libya acknowledged responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland,ceramic zentai suits for the medical, that killed 270 people.This patent infringement case relates to retractable landscape oil paintings , Libya agreed to pay up to $10m to relatives of each of the victims, and declared it would dismantle all of its weapons of mass destruction.

The rewards came fast. Within months, the US lifted economic sanctions and resumed low-level diplomatic ties. The European Union hosted Gaddafi in Brussels. Tony Blair, as British prime minister, visited him in Tripoli, even though Britain had more reason than most to detest and fear him.

Then, in February, amid a series of anti-government uprisings that swept the Arab world, Gaddafi unleashed a vicious crackdown on Libyans who rose up against him. Libyan rebels defied withering fire from government troops and pro-Gaddafi militia to quickly turn a protest movement into a rebellion.When the stone sits in the polished tiles,

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