The 'New' Libya: Dark skin citizens need not attend

"If indeed there will be a constitution coming, it should include equal rights for all, not just light skinned Libyans (Africans). If the rebels are (were) indeed fighting for a free democracy equal justice for all, their Achilles heel may be racism as it was so dramatically played out in the rampage. Now if this isn't a newsworthy story that American journalists can't seem to grasp--what a shame."  (Blog entry by writer, Yahoo, 8/28/11)

I guess you can say that I come from the old school which is truly manifested in how I approach many things in life these days.  I'm talking about dressing, manners, critical thinking, music,and things like that. While I could never divorce myself from the personal eccentrics that help to pinpoint my unique personality, at the same time  happens to be a part of real culture that now epitomizes an era now in retreat--save the music.

 I'm beginning to advise others to learn how to embrace the aging process--learn what words like grateful means, or the phrase being grateful means.  Yes I call it old school wisdom, but it's really universal thinking that says if one embraces a truth than that truth will become a part of that person's reality in the universal scheme of things and in different ways.  Yet the greatest gift of embracing, in my mind's eye, is the ability to become more and more capable of prescient behavior.  This brings me to a 'new' and racist society called Libya.

Darfur refugee women

Even as the civil war that has been taking place in Libya, not only has the country shown flashes of pictures of how some (man) man think in this North Africa country, but it has, according to my prescient observation, revealed a ugly reality.  That reality being that it is a racially biased country, it is a racist country.  To speak more succinctly, light skin people who are virtually in charge of the country don't like dark skin people, or to be more polite Libyans have a problem with people who are darker than their light brown complexion. Now this is a disturbing fact but no less disturbing than having racist rebels backed by countries who have been (and some continue to  be) the historical bedrock of the colonial conquest of dark-skinned people, their countries, their country resources-- especially  in Africa and with a modern day twist in the Middle East.

 The real revolutionary may indeed be hiding under a rock at the time of this submission.

Moreover,  a key observer who has any degree of analytical comprehension in world matters can easily deduct some comparative historical elements from some major activity, namely that in the Darfur region of western Sudan.   This violent campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur had forced many dark-skinned refugees into eastern Chad. Its ethnic-racial overtones pits the Arab militia against non-Arab African groups where the Janjaweed militia (Arab) terrorizes Darfur communities, killing men and raping women and girls. It is a dismal event that the  United Nations and other leading countries, like the U.S. have long called "one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world." 

Inhabitants of the region had suffered greatly from the famine of 1984-1985, and the major loss of crop land and overall resources led to conflicts often between different racial groups.  While these conflicts occurred throughout the 1990s, violence quickly escalated after two rebel groups, The Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) initiated attacks on police stations and military bases in Darfur. Since the membership of SPLA/M and JEM mainly consisted of non-Arab tribes (such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa) in the west while government in mainly ruled by Arab Muslims, the conflict soon took on ethnic and racial overtones.

Of course, while the situation in Libya hasn't even come close to the denigrating effects of a Darfur, it should be the prescience of world leadership that helps to identify, plan and respond to challenges that don't concur with a real democracy.  

Then, too, one of the proclaimed democracies in  the Middle East (Northern Africa included) is Israel.  If the 'new' Libyan society plans to model their government and culture after them, then that's a problem.  Israel has also been accused of being the most racist country in the Middle East.

Where Gadaffi had wooed leaders in Africa with his great visions of African unity and economic sovereignty, the newly placed leaders of Libya will have none of it.  This is good news for the West as they can continue to facilitate their strategy of historical  hegemony.  It is also telling as one would wonder how can the West preach about human rights, humanity, equality, and democracy and allow such a radical potential for racial bias be able penetrate their so-called foundations of democracy?

I'm reminded many times over how those who are dis-empowered can't seem to get why they are so persecuted, even when they are so pliable to the master's demands--even willing to emulate his every standards.  The answer may lie in a cliche that declares 'many things are what they are and not what you want them to be'.  So the rebels may have, wise or not, acquiesced to this reality.  They may be rebels, but they aren't freedom fighters--nor foolish.  They can only go as far as the master allows them, and for the record that progress won't come off as revolutionary as proclaimed.  The real revolutionary may indeed be hiding under a rock at the time of this submission.

MUST READ!

A Victory for the Libyan People? 

The Top Ten Myths in the War Against Libya  

  

by  Maximilian C. Forte.  Check out this excellent reading at Counterpunch.

Excerpt

. . ."The racist targeting and killing of black Libyans and Sub-Saharan Africans continues to the present. Patrick Cockburn and Kim Senguptaspeak of the recently discovered mass of “rotting bodies of 30 men, almost all black and many handcuffed, slaughtered as they lay on stretchers and even in an ambulance in central Tripoli”. Even while showing us video of hundreds of bodies in the Abu Salim hospital, the BBC dares not remark on the fact that most of those are clearly black people, and even wonders about who might have killed them. This is not a question for the anti-Gaddafi forces interviewed by Sengupta: “‘Come and see. These are blacks, Africans, hired by Gaddafi, mercenaries,’ shouted Ahmed Bin Sabri, lifting the tent flap to show the body of one dead patient, his grey T-shirt stained dark red with blood, the saline pipe running into his arm black with flies. Why had an injured man receiving treatment been executed?” Recent reports reveal the insurgents engaging in ethnic cleansing against black Libyans in Tawergha, the insurgents calling themselves “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin,” vowing that in the “new Libya” black people from Tawergha would be barred from health care and schooling in nearby Misrata, from which black Libyans had already been expelled by the insurgents". . .

Now a Epilogue of for Savages