While Obama & Co. claim we’re waging war on Libya to prevent genocide, the only documented instances of real genocide in Libya have been committed by the rebels we’re bombing to protect.

That’s not opinion. It’s unequivocal fact. And the victims are slaughtered for the simple fact that their skins are black.

Wolfgang Weber reports from Germany for the World Socialist Web Site:

The opposition forces in Libya attempting to march on Tripoli with the assistance of American, French and British bombs are far removed from the image of innocent civilians fighting for freedom and democracy promoted by the media and political circles. This is made clear in a March 22 article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Gunnar Heinsohn, the author of Encyclopaedia of Genocide (Rowohlt, 1998). Heinsohn cites a report by the well-known Zimbabwean journalist and documentary filmmaker Farai Sevenzo dealing with barbaric, pogrom-like massacres perpetrated by the so-called “rebels” against black African workers in Libya. The article states: “Because mercenaries from Chad and Mali are presumed to be fighting for him [Gaddafi], the lives of a million African refugees and thousands of African migrants are at risk. A Turkish construction worker told the British radio station BBC: ‘We had seventy to eighty people from Chad working for our company. They were massacred with pruning shears and axes, accused by the attackers of being Gaddafi’s troops. The Sudanese people were massacred. We saw it for ourselves.’ ” The genocide authority Heinsohn explains: “It is standard knowledge in genocide research that minorities come under attack in civil wars because at least one party to the conflict accuses them of collaborating with the enemy…. “Whoever wants to prevent crimes against humanity with the use of force…is always in danger of helping one side in the neutralisation or even extermination of the other side…. UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of March 17 against the Libyan government provides a perfect example. “All the stops of international criminal law have been pulled against those prepared to bloodily defend their power. The material assets at risk are meticulously listed. But neither in the text of the resolution nor in the speeches of US Secretary of State Clinton or French President Sarkozy is any mention made of warnings or legal threats directed to the insurgents. The use of ‘mercenaries’ by the Libyan leadership is expressly condemned. But genocidal acts conducted under the same pretext—such as the mass killings of black African workers reported by Farai Sevenzo—go unmentioned…. A cloak of complete silence is being thrown up surrounding the deeds of his [Gaddafi’s] opponents.” Read the rest.

Then consider this from former Congressional Representative Cynthia McKinney:

Libya’s Revolution brought free health care and education to the people and subsidized housing. In fact, students in Libya can study there or abroad and the government gives them a monthly stipend while they are in school and they pay no tuition. If a Libyan needs a surgery that must be done overseas, then the government will pay for that surgery. That is more than the soldiers of the United States military can say. While Libyans enjoy subsidized housing, members of the U.S. military risk foreclosure while they serve their country abroad. Money from oil is directly deposited into the accounts of every Libyan based on oil income. As one Libyan told me recently, the idea is that if people have what they need, then they don’t have to deny rights to or harm others and the Revolution believes that it is the responsibility of the government to provide the basic needs of its citizens. >snip< Black people who would have not otherwise ever connected with one another have been able to do so for more than forty years because of the educational and cultural conferences that Qaddafi has sponsored. The only requirement for participation was that they be willing to commit to work towards the ongoing development of Africa–all of Africa and wherever Africans are. Mr. Qaddafi to this day continues to assist Black political organizations in an effort to keep people of African descent able to exercise their right of self-determination. Meanwhile, on the Continent, Africans not ready to kowtow to France, the United States, or other former colonial powers maintain their independence thanks to Qaddafi, the former head of the African Union. Qaddafi was named African Leader of the Year in 2009. Qaddafi provided the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela the wherewithal to defeat apartheid in South Africa. In short, if you want to stop Black people, then one key move is to stop Colonel Qaddafi. Read the rest.

Do we admire everything about Moammar Gaddafi? No. But in comparison to, say, the King of Bahrain, where rules a country where Obama is quite willing to allow a cabal of royals to bomb slaughter people who haven’t fired a shot, we’d have to say Gaddafi is quite an improvement.

And there is no one who can say that Gaddafi has been anything other than a consistent supporter of the efforts of darker-skinned Africans to free themselves from the toxic legacy of colonialism, an unquestionable fact ignored completely by the American corporate media.