Interview with the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan by radio host Gary Byrd of WLIB 1190AM in New York on July 31, 2011
“I don’t know if our listening audience is aware that the United Nations in March of this year was going to present Muammar Gadhafi with the United Nations Humanitarian Award for the great work that he and those with him were doing not only for the Libyan people, but for the African continent as well. Muammar Gadhafi, whether we like him or not, when you understand what this Brother has done not only for Libya, but also using petrodollars to help Africa – this man put into a bank billions of dollars to help Africa get their own satellite so we don’t have to call through Europe to get to Africa. Now we can call directly to Africa, which caused Europe to lose over $500 million last year.
Gadhafi put millions of dollars into an account to set up an African Development Bank. Gadhafi used money-oil revenue that he gets from Libya – to finance business projects throughout Africa to make Africa more independent. Instead of raw materials coming up out of the land in Africa being sent to Europe to be fashioned into goods that are sent back to Africa at a higher price, this was going to stop. Africa would take her own resources, make products and put her own products on the market.
He used billions of dollars to connect states in Africa. This man has something to make Western powers, who have grown strong sucking the blood of Africa, fearing that if Africa became independent and used the tremendous resources that Africa has, and that the Western world needs, in order to become powerful and stay powerful in the 21st century.
So he became a threat. In order to vamp on him and destroy him and destroy what he was doing with Africa and for Africa, they manufactured this false play that he was killing his own people in order to put him out of power, assassinate him, destroy the good that this man has done and put a puppet regime in power so that they would no longer have to contend with the idea of the United States of Africa, which the African Union was moving towards under Brother Gadhafi’s guidance, help and monetary assistance.
What was also leading to this humanitarian award to Gadhafi and the Libyan Jamahirya was the UN report that was issued around January 2011, a multi-country report that seemed to give Libya, and subsequently Gadhafi’s government, rather high marks and praise as early as January 2011 around a whole range of issues.
What Brother Gadhafi did coming to power in a bloodless coup is, he nationalized the oil, he removed Britain and America from their bases in Libya and he used Libyan oil to finance revolutionary movements against puppet regimes in Africa and other parts of the world. This made him persona non grata in the West, and it also set him up as an enemy of those who have traditionally misused Africa and poisoned African leadership.
When I say poison, I don’t mean with physical poison, but African leaders who wanted more for themselves than they wanted for the liberation of our people – these are the types of leaders that America supported. They did not support Osageyfo Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture and many of those revolutionaries and many of those revolutionary thinking Black leaders, Patrice Lumumba and others. These are the Black Leaders who were murdered or abandoned or who were set up to destroy their power, because they were the leaders who understood a United Africa. Not all of these separate states.
Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Adel Nasser, they wanted to lift up the idea of the Honorable Marcus Garvey-that there should be one Africa. That is what Nasser wanted, that is what Nkrumah wanted, that is what Muammar Gadhafi spent billions of dollars trying to promote: an African Union on the way to a United States of Africa. This is what made him such a threat to the West, and unfortunately for them, he’s still there, he’s still alive. They will ultimately have to deal with that man.
If I can make a point with this. He raised the standard of living with the Libyan people to the highest on the African continent and even the highest in the Middle East. He freed women who were Muslims to be a part of government, to be a part of a society where they don’t sit back and allow men to do everything.
The women are partners with the men in Libya. He was a socialist in orientation in the early days, but as he became involved deeper and deeper with the Quran, he saw himself as a reformer of Islam, and he was in the process of reforming Islam in his country and influencing the development in others.
I was there with him, my dear brother, when he spent $33 billion to create a marvel in the 20th century where they discovered water under the desert. And he invested $33 billion to bring that water up out of the desert, and I was with him on the day that we pushed a certain button and the water began from near Benghazi into Tripoli, almost to the Tunisian boarder.
He made agriculture an absolute must for Libya, that they would produce their own food. He made it possible for the Libyans to get land and equipment to farm the land so that Libya would never have to depend on others for the basic necessities of food. This is what this man was doing, not only for Libya, but he was doing it for Africa as well. He became a thorn in the side of Europe, so now they want regime change.
The man was not in any office of power, he’s the revolutionary leader. We call him Brother Leader Muammar Gadhafi. He set up a participatory democracy where the people make the decisions for the future, and he guides the revolution.
I was with him, dear brother, when African presidents would come in, and he encouraged them and said, “Look, we are revolutionaries and you cannot have a revolution and every four years or eight years you bring somebody else in who may or may not continue the trend that you have started.” So when people say he has been in power too long, it takes a long time to bring a mind out of a colonial and slave mentality. He is not interested in power in that sense for himself, but he wants to empower the people.
And lastly, brother, he shared oil revenue with all the citizens of Libya. No Libyan has to pay for health care, education or for living in a house or an apartment.
Everybody there has a place to live. And he has sent hundreds of thousands of Libyans all over the world to study and the Libyan government pays for their education. If there is an operation that a Libyan needs and they have to go to Europe or America for that operation, the Libyan government pays for it. There is no government on the earth that does that for their people to the degree that this man has done.
That kind of leader with that kind of work for his people is an enemy to those who want to live off the sweat, blood and labor of the poor, but not give the poor anything in return. This is why some say that if this man came to America with what he has done for Libya and was trying to do for Africa, maybe they would renounce the 22nd Amendment and change it and make Gadhafi president in America for life.
You know, Gadhafi got into trouble with many Arabs in his own country because he said that Libya really belonged to the Blacks, and that the future of the world would be with Black people. He invited many Black people throughout the world to come to Libya. He gave them work and they became Libyan citizens. Now, when Arabs saw that-some of whom are absolutely racist – they felt he was doing too much for Africans and for Africa.
They rebelled against him for that. So when this group rose in Benghazi, the hatred for Black Africa and for Blacks came out of them and they’re slaughtering African Libyans, Black Libyans and calling them mercenaries when, if fact, they belong to Libya. Yes, this has gone on and it is going on, and with the help of Allah, we hope that all of this will stop, and that if the NATO bombing stops, then maybe the Libyan forces can liberate Benghazi and stop the slaughter of African people by Arabs who hate Black people.”
See
here for the full interview.
(Susan Lindauer) Here’s breaking News from a confidential source inside Tripoli. And it’s nothing like what CNN is broadcasting… Pay attention to live reports from Zawia.
