Estimated reading time: 11 minute(s)
The media has a keen ability in making a good man look wicked and a wicked man look good.
Sadly, most of us as American citizens readily embrace what we see and hear on television and on the Internet without doing further investigation.
Some of us mock or tease others who jump on the bandwagon after a certain team wins a championship yet in our hypocrisy we allow this government’s opinion of world leaders to give us our full perspective on them—even if it is outright lies.
Therefore, we have continuously jumped on America’s bandwagon. Sorry to disappoint you, but many of us can’t go along with it. Never have, never will.
There is a long list of good works that was done by Muammar Gadhafi that we have chosen to ignore and has been underreported. Yes, good works.
Have you ever heard of journalist Gerald A. Perreira from Guyana? He was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Tripoli and also served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Libyan revolution.
What makes the reporting of Perreira so valuable is the fact that he lived in Libya and wrote extensively about the good works of Gadhafi.  In a press conference at the UN on June 15, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan quoted from Perreia’s article titled “In the Theatre of the Absurd, Libya Now Takes Centre Stage.â€
According to this article, some of the good works of Gadhafi, not known by most, included:
- Gadhafi nationalized Libya’s oil reserves and used the oil revenue to build schools, hospitals and repair infrastructure for the Libyan people.
- Money from Libya’s oil revenue was directly deposited into the bank account of every Libyan.
- He raised the life expectancy from 44 years to 75 years.
- He raised the literacy rate from 20 percent to 83 percent.
- All people in Libya had access to doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines. And it was free!
- Basic food items were subsidized and electricity was made available throughout the country.
- Gadhafi set up huge irrigation projects in order to support agricultural development and food self-sufficiency.
- Gadhafi spent billions on the Great Man Made River project where his engineers brought water up out of the desert for the people. Would a ‘madman’ do that?
- Any Libyan who wanted to become a farmer was given free use of land, a house, farm equipment, livestock and seed.
- Under Gadhafi, women had full access to education, employment; and Gadhafi enabled them to serve in the armed forces.
- Gadhafi was the first and only leader in the Arab world to formally apologize for the Arab role in Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
- Gadhafi put up a 21st century communications satellite—the first in Africa. This upset European companies who now lost a stream of income that came from their outrageous fees imposed on Africans.
- Gadhafi vowed that his own parents, who lived in a tent in the desert, would not be housed until every Libyan was housed. He made his word bond. Under Gadhafi, Libya attained the highest standard of living in Africa.
- Gadhafi started and financed the African Union with the purpose of developing the “United States of Africa.†This was and is something the Western world did not want.
Wait, there is one more thing. We say we love Nelson Mandela, right?
When Mandela visited Gadhafi, he was quoted as saying “Those who object to my visiting Libya have no morals, and I will not join them because I have morals. Qadhafi is my friend. He helped us at a time when we were alone. And the ones who are stopping us from coming here were helping our enemies at that time.â€
Gadhafi wasn’t perfect but who is? When analyzing his life, I think about a few tweets that Minister Farrakhan posted on Aug. 30. He tweeted “There is no leader in this world who was or is loved by all. Allah puts on His Scale the weight of our good and our evil. This is how He judges and He is judging today.â€
There is much more good that Gadhafi did, but the question is do you really care?
(Originally Posted on October 24, 2011. Follow him on Twitter @BrotherJesse.)
