WHO ARE THE AFRICANS IN LIBYA?

[welkram]

We should all by now be aware that a lot of the 'eyewitness news' coming out of Libya over the last week has been made up propaganda from the anti goverment forces. I.E. "shooting at us with antiaircraft guns" or "bombing us" or even "using napalm" etc, etc. This has become plainly evident to most broardcasting news services when you hear reporters now ask "have you seen this yourself" or "did you witness this with your own eyes".

However one statement that continually crops up and never seems to be questioned by the reporters is "he has brought in Africans to shoot us" or "his Africans are roaming the streets shooting at anyone" and lastly "his African mercenaries do what ever they wish including rape and murder". I'm not trying to make lite of this terrible situation but just who are these 'Africans'?

I am well aware that Libya is in Africa but when you hear the Libyan people talk of these 'Africans' they say it in a very derisory way as though they were talking about black Africans rather than other North Africans. What black African goverments have agreemrnts with Libya , perhaps the southern Sahara regions, Chad, Mali, Niger, Sudan, does anyone know or have suggestions?

[beutelwolf]

Today I have heard on the wireless that Mugabe is sending troops to Libya to support the regime. So, Zimbabwe is your answer, part of it anyway.

[andy at handiwork]

Gaddafi deliberately kept his army small and under resourced because he didn't think he could rely on them if it came to shooting fellow Libyans. He has for a long time used the services of mercenaries from Chad to fill the gaps in his military.

[welkram]

That makes a change, blacks enslaving Arabs.

[RoddersUK]

Good comment. The arabs were the bastards who started the slave trade in case anyone wonders who did start it.

[andy at handiwork]

Slavery has existed since the early days of human history. I dont think any single group can be said to have started it.

[RoddersUK]

Good point. But slavery as we in our ivory towers see it is the trade that flourished from Africa to the Carribean and the southern states of America.
Thousands of years before this the Romans, for one, enslaved all of the peoples of the territories that they conquered. They weren't alone as everybody who was powerful enough to conquer would enslave the inhabitants. The Normans did it to us, so in effect the British were an enslaved nation, and sometimes I think we still are.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]But slavery as we in our ivory towers see it is the trade that flourished from Africa to the Carribean and the southern states of America.[/quote]

It's how we see it because it is part of our own history. Of course nearly every other tribe and race enslaved whomever it could. It was what humans did. Naturally, though, just like we concentrate on British conquests and battles much more than we do Japanese conquests and battles, we bring up our own participation in slavery more than other peoples'.

I don't think anyone's denying others didn't do it too. Note: East African slavery to the Arab and North African world is still going on. Some might say the sweat-shops in the far east are a modern equivalent to the slave trade across the Atlantic.

[RoddersUK]

Isn't that what I wrote?

[Flat_Eric]

welkram wrote:

news' coming out of Libya over the last week has been made up
> propaganda from the anti goverment forces. I.E. "shooting at us
> with antiaircraft guns" or "bombing us" or even "using napalm"
> etc, etc. This has become plainly evident to most broardcasting
> news services when you hear reporters now ask "have you seen
> this yourself" or "did you witness this with your own eyes".


Of course it's ludicrous to suggest these things are happening - Gaddafi's a nice bloke, just a bit misunderstood that's all. He wouldn't even swat a fly, let alone send his air force to bomb his own people.

It's all another dastardly Western plot to steal their oil and engage in genocide against Muslims. And of course the evil Western media are in on it as well. Take those two Libyan air force pilots who flew their planes to Malta for example, "rather than bomb civilians". Clearly they were Western agents flying planes painted in Libyan markings and saying these things just to make the Colonel look bad. Or they were holograms (not sure which but it had to be one of the other).

If you want the full SP, just listen to Gaddafi's lad, young Saif. He tells it like it is: It's just a few crazed drug addicts working in cahoots with Al Quaeda, Western goverments and the Queen. And everywhere in Libya is calm. And anyway there aren't many of them and "we have them surrounded".

Don't be fooled. We're the bad guys really. Gaddafi's just a harmless eccentric.

- Eric