This is floating around Facebook and I was wondering if any of it is true?
The unknown facts about the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi:
There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
Home considered a human right in Libya – Gaddafi vowed that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a home. Gaddafi’s father has died while him, his wife and his mother are still living in a tent.
All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans are literate. Today the figure is 83%.
Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick-start their farms – all for free.
If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US$2,300/mth accommodation and car allowance.
In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidized 50% of the price.
The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – now frozen globally.
Great Man-Made River project in Libya… $27 billion
If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.
A portion of Libyan oil sale is, credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
A mother who gave birth to a child receive US$5,000
40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $ 0.15
25% of Libyans have a university degree
Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
Which other dictator has done much good to his people besides
I doubt it is that generous, but certainly it’s amazng what you can do when the country is floating on oil at $90/barrel. 0% Interest is a tenet of the Qoran, no interest is allowed in the muslim faith. Most Arab countries subsidize food and gas prices because the average (often unemployed) peasant cannot afford to live otherwise. Starvation or cutting subsidies on food is a good way to start riots that topple governments, as many middle-eastern dictators have found.
There’s one thing that’s missing from the list - there was an interview with a fellow whose brother worked in a bank in Libya. When someone complained about there being no money in their account, the guy told him “take it up with that stupid Gahddafi”. He was arrested that night for the remark, and a few months later, he and about 2,000 other political prisoners were taken to the prison courtyard and shot point-blank by the secret police. I assume those were subsidized bullets.
Of course, Cuba has a very highly educated population too. That would explain why their economy is so strong I assume.
This wouldn’t surprise me. Every person in Alaska gets a check every year (this year it’s a bit over $1,000, but has been as high as $2,000), and they have nowhere near the oil that Libya has.
In Marley23’s post, he quotes an article from The New York Times which says that the average life expectancy has risen from 51 to over 74 in the last 42 years, while the literacy rate has risen to 88%. Wikipedia says that the present life expectancy is 74.0 years (a tie for 71st in the world) and the literacy rate is 86.8% (112th in the world):
Let’s just note that most of the countries of the world offer free education up to grade school level and most of the well-off ones offer free medical care:
The life expectancy in most countries rose about 8 or 9 years from 1969 to 2011. So what happened in Libya was that some proportion of the oil money was spent on the basic public education and medical care costs that are covered in most countries of the world, particularly the well-off ones. This is a good thing, but it’s about average for what’s expected in the world today.
Right. You might say he helped take Libya from an impoverished ex-colony to an impoverished dictatorship. The standard of living seems to have improved, but everybody’s standard of living went up in the last 40 years and many countries must have improved more than Libya did. Some countries saw major improvements without Gaddafi’s signature bloodbaths and corruption. I read another article yesterday where a Libyan said the country has around 10 universities and 120 prisons, in whole or in part because Gaddafi didn’t want an educated populace to overthrow him or didn’t think anybody needed to know anything except what he told them. (His manifesto was, of course, required reading.) I’m sure there were some actual criminals in the prisons, but I’m also sure there were plenty of people Gafaddi just didn’t like.
You could say a lot of the same things about Saddam Hussein in Iraq. At one time (before the first Gulf War) it was a pretty modern country with good education and more rights for women than some other countries in the Middle East, for example.
If you’re evaluating a dictatorship, you have to do it in context. The list the OP is quoting seems to take a lot of promises at face value and to say the least it fails to mention any downside. Even if they were all true, it doesn’t mean Gadaffi wasn’t a dictator (he indisuptably was) or that he got a bad rap, and it certainly looks like that’s what the author of the list was trying to say.
Dictators, theocracies, and other governments of that type always make these sorts of claims. Saudi Arabia is a country I’m familiar with and has a lot of the same kind of things Libya does. The problem is in the details they don’t tell you.
There are public hospitals that are free. The problem is that many of the docs are Sudani or Pakistani and are more familiar with veterinary work than working on people.
Universities are free, but the students graduate with degrees in “Koranic Recitation” and “Islamic Jurisprudence” rather than anything useful. Of course, the other problem is with the wealthier students bribing the profs for a passing grade on the finals. The profs are mostly Palestinian and are desperately poor so bribery is a big issue.
Citizens with serious ailments may be sent abroad for specialized treatments. The problem is that this tends to be either members of the royal family or those with access to them. “Abdullah Average” doesn’t have much chance of being sent anywhere.
Gasoline is cheap in Saudi and probably Libya as well. After all, they’re practically floating on the stuff so why shouldn’t it be?
Another one is the Chinese “barefoot doctors.” A Chinese guy in Saudi was telling me that if the barefoot doctor was your only medical care, you’d better make your will. Little to no medicines and basic training at best.
All those governments make these kinds of claims but the truth on the ground is usually something VERY different.
useless college studies are not unique to oil-rich Arabs. At least those koranic grads don’t end up with big student debts, not like the holders of degrees in “English”, “psychology” and similar that mostly prepare people to “occupy wall street”.
code_grey, you’ve received several previous moderator notes to keep political jabs out of General Questions. Since you haven’t responded to repeated reminders regarding the rules of this forum, I’m making this one an Official Warning.
this being the GQ, I think that Testy really has to give a cite for his claim that Koranic recitation and Islamic jurisprudence do not prepare students for anything useful. Otherwise this sounds like an undue political jab aimed at the research-based policies of the Ministry of Education of King Abdullah, the Guardian of the Two Holy Mosques. Solid, standards-based Islamic education implemented by the proven, experienced, monarchically-funded educators prepares students to be responsible citizens of 21st century theocracy, criticism from various disaffected nutjobs notwithstanding. And college is not supposed to be a vocational school since it’s really all about… you know the drill.
I’m honestly not sure whether you’re being snarky or just what. I lived and worked in SA for almost 3 decades. During that time I was the general manager of a medium sized IT company. Saudis were constantly being sent in by the government labor office or sometimes coming in on their own looking for a job.
As we were an IT company, I was usually looking for coders, technicians, DBAs and the like. A degree in Koranic recitation or Islamic Jurisprudence was VERY common and to me, the guy that did most of the hiring, it indicated that the man didn’t have a lot on the ball except an ability to parrot religious doctrine. The guys coming in with this were out of a job at the time and were still out of a job when they left the office. We just didn’t need those skills.
If you are actually looking for a cite that a degree in Koranic Recitation or Islamic law doesn’t generally lead to a high paying job, I’m sorry but I can’t help you. To me, it seems obvious.
And to think that all those people people that wanted him dead for no reason. Generous or not, he was a terrorist and all around bad guy. Got what he deserved.
The more I have had time to think about it the more the OP’s fact set makes sense. If you are a dictator and a brutal one at that wouldn’t it make sense to take care of most of the population to ensure that you stay in power? Even if you are a complete douche, people will tolerate you if it benefits them enough.
under Mussolini it was also bad for your health to do the large scale Marxist labor strikes which were not healthy either for the train schedules or for economy in general. Which is why, surprise-surprise, Italian business and political class supported the fascists as a cure to the chaos induced by socialist and anarchist activity in post-WW1 Italy.
While in early postwar Italy, Germany, Finland, Estonia and a few other countries the commie subversives were violently crushed in the bud, Hungary was not so lucky until finally liberated by a Romanian invasion 6 months later.
And it only took 40 years. The guy was a survivor of the first order; sort of a middle eastern Castro who somehow always seemed to avoid being killed. Even at the end he survived a drone attack when most of his caravan was killed. I was actually surprised (and doubtful) when I read about his death.
Thanks for all the answers. I was pretty dubious about the claims (it sounds very much like a propaganda government piece) but I had nothing to really back up my theory except anecdotal (and not very objective) evidence.
for this last one it is not a very good idea, because the waters are fossil waters from the age when the Sahara was a sea, and when they are gone there is no more. I have seen writings that say because of the wasting involved this will not last more than a few generations. I forget where I saw this, but like the health care - which everyone in Lybia knows is very bad - it is more on the surface a good thing than really good. Libians go to Tunisia, a poorer country, by thousands for health care. This tells you what his gains there were like. And also the bulgarian nurses incident.
This is not true. No usury is allowed. The Wahhabi view which is being very strongly promoted by them is that this is same as interest. Many others say it is usury, excessive interest like mafia loans. There is nothing written clearly in Quran about 0 percent interest, only usury (riba) - where interest is faida.
Unlike alcohol this is a real difference.
Sadly this was very frequently happening in Lybia, it is not for no reason there was such a mass revolt against him.
Although in Lybia it was not like Saudia where Quran studies so dominate because of the Wahhabites, Lybian universities have a very bad reputation. People pay for grades, yes, and there is also much suffering from political interferences and where you have to teach and watch out for your political relations more than your teaching. And i you give a bad grade to an idiot who is also close to the Qaddafi or someone close to him, you will be told to reconsider or you would go away.
In Lybia it was not that hard to get to go to Tunisia which though only half as rich as Lybia has very good hospitals compared to them. But that was just disgusting and sad, since there was no very good reason why Lybian hospitals had to be so bad and dangerous.
It leads to stupid wasting of it, of course.
I agree with Testy although that is more something that is true of the Saudis. Still the public universities in the Maghreb turn out many graduates with no useful education at all. It is not in Quran recitation, but it might be in History or in Social Sciences, but taught only as memorisation without any writing or any analysis or disputing ideas. So of course in private sector such people are considered totally without use, as if they had no degree.