http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaddafi
The reality of Qaddafi is a real paradox. I realized this more fully after listening to a New York Times Reporter who lives mostly in Africa and was being interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his GPS show on CNN. I usually find Zakaria to be a very intelligent and astute person in regard to world politics and business. Zakaria and Wolf Blitzer on CNN tend to be the two I like to listen to about world politics and business and weather. Brian Williams I like to listen to at 5:30PM monday through Friday (and I also DVR this program so I can listen to it at my convenience along with Zakaria's GPS and Wolf Blitzer's show.
So, the really strange sides of Qaddhafi seem to be coming out more and more into the western press.
I think the best way to define Qaddhafi would be to call him a ruthless Al Capone with no mercy for his own people on the one hand and on the other someone a lot like the Bill Gates Foundation in AFrica on the other.
Here are some of the strange facts. First of all, he thinks nothing of leveling whole cities of his people to stay in power. He thinks nothing of massacring any tribe but his own even to the point of the permanent extinction of that family or tribe so they never exist again genetically.
Then there is the other side that we don't hear about much in the U.S. He is an advocate for the UNited States of Africa. Though it hasn't and likely might never exist he is respected throughout Africa for this point of view. Another example of this strangeness is $100 million dollars that he used of his own money to build the most exotic, well lighted government palace in all of Mali, a neighboring country. What this has done is made many Mali young men want to pool money to go fight to defend Qaddhafi.
The other strange thing is that Qaddhafi has 144 tons of gold. I can't remember what this is worth exactly in dollars when I did it recently but it was around 6 billion dollars. He could hire mercenaries just by taking a hack saw and giving these mercenaries pieces of gold for the next 100 years or his sons after him. All these things I have mentioned are true about Qaddhafi and many many more. He has been very financially generous to almost all African nations including very sumptuous bribes to many many African leaders in the African Union. This is one reason why they don't ask for his removal because he is likely sending many of their children through college and buying them who knows what even now.
There is a truth about life that can be fortunate or unfortunate which is, "Money is power". Money would not be power in some people's hands. But in the crafty and sociopathic way Qaddhafi operates "Money is power". So will he be removed from office. Possibly. But then expect he and his 144 tons of gold to move to Mali or Uganda out of the reach of the World Court.
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