It Could Happen Here - Gaddafi with Andrew

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Andrew and James discuss Muammar Gaddafi and his claims of anti imperialism.  Sources:https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muammar-al-Qaddafi https://www.britannica.com/place/Libya/ Libya: The History of Gaddafi's Pariah State By John Oakes Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution By David Blundy, Andrew Lycett https://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-return-of-muammar-gaddafi https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2013/10/03/gaddafis-harem-book https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-16289543 https://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2016/02/17/what-happened-to-the-other-libyans https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329567625_A_Linguistic_Liberation_of_Gaddafi%27s_Libya_From_Near-Extinction_to_an_Imminent_Revitalization_of_Amazigh https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/features/2018/10/13/tebu-cultural-awakening-we-may-not-be-arabs-but-we-are-libyan https://marxist.com/nature-of-gaddafi-regime.htm https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/business/23views.html Gaddafi’s relations with the West: https://libcom.org/article/lies-slaughter-capital-2011-nato-intervention-libya-part-two https://libcom.org/article/libyan-peoples-committees-should-be-foundation-new-life-not-just-interim-measure https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/09/05/us-torture-and-rendition-gaddafis-libya https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/09/secret-intelligence-documents-discovered-libyaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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get your podcast. Hello and welcome to Ikrappan here. I'm Andrusi, Chandraism, on YouTube, and joined again by... It's James again. Yes. I've noticed a phenomenon. I'm not sure if you've noticed it, too. where anti-imperialist solidarity

somehow goes a step beyond opposing imperialist aggression itself and crosses into lionizing or whitewashing the targets of that aggression or rather the sensible leaders of the target to that aggression. Yeah, I have noticed this too it's one of the things that makes me most angry in the world what's been referred to as the anti-imperialism of idiots.

Yes. Not so relevant now, but I used to like to apply the Assad test to anybody who claimed to be interested in the politics of liberation. If you think Bashar al-Assad is a based anti-imperialist people's socialist hero, then your politics are shit. I have nothing good to say about that. Like, you're an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. It should be a fringe phenomenon, right?

But I haven't seen it get an increase in traction. Yeah. even in like relatively, you know, like I won't start a war with various U.S. leftist publications. But I went to pitch some people this last week thinking like there is speculation that the United States will once again ally itself with Kurdish groups. So I'm sure had then planned to once again abandon when that became politically more expedient. But I happened to have some insight into these various Kurdish groups having spent some time there and having contacts there. And so I went to. websites of these various, you know, big publications which are left or left-leaning or even

sort of liberal. And I saw these borderline campus takes on what's happening in Iran. And it's just so, so frustrating to me. Like, it makes me so angry that people continue to view the world through this binary Marvel movie lens, which sees it as impossible that two things could be bad at the same time. Yeah, it's infuriating to me. Yeah. And, if I was more inclined to conspiracy, I might say that this binary is intentionally constructed. You know, it's by design that the most vocal anti-imperialist voices also just so happen to align themselves with state power. Yeah. And camp is on.

But I'm not inclined to conspiracy, so. Yeah, yeah. One could make a pretty reasonable argument for that, right? One could make that argument. Yeah. I won't, but one could. I might. I think one of the best examples of this is the sort of odd obsession that some people have with Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Now, last episode, we spoke about the long-term consequences of Western intervention in Libya, beginning with the 2011 uprising during the Arab Spring against the 42-year rule of MoMA al-Qaddafi. What began as a broad, largely leaderless protest movement was quickly shaped by foreign intervention. In March of 2011, the U.S., the UK, and France launched a military campaign through NATO under a UN mandate to protect civilians. The war toppled Gaddafi but killed tens of thousands and devastated infrastructure. In the aftermath, Libya fractured into rival governments, militias and foreign-backed factions, triggering yet another civil war in 2014. and despite a ceasefire in 2020, the country remains divided between competing administrations, while ordinary Libyans face instability, human rights abuses, and economic hardship. I think it's fair to say that the NATO intervention was a net negative for the country.

But in the same breath, I cannot agree with those who seem to believe that Gaddafi's rule could have continued either, that he was some force for good in the country. And in this episode, I really want to get into the why. to identify and dissect the actions of the man Gaddafi. According to his biography in InSak's Borettar, al-Qaddafi was born in 1942 near Sirtay, Libya. 69 years later, he would be captured and killed in Sirti, Libya. After spending his early years in a tent,

he graduated from the University of Libya in 1963 and then graduated from a military academy in 1965. In 1969, at the age of 27, Gaddafi pulled off a bloodless coup to seize power from King Idris I of Libya. For the next four decades plus, he will be the de facto ruler of Libya. Gaddafi was both a passionate Arab nationalist and a Muslim. In power, he tried to push both of his ideologies. He expelled Western military forces, expelled remaining Italian settlers and Jewish communities in Libya,

nationalized the country's oil industry, banned alcohol and gambling, tried to unify with his Arab neighbors, occasionally by attempting coups in their countries, and stood against normalization with Israel. So a very mixed bag, so far. Yeah. Until 1977, Gaddafi ruled the Libyan Arab Republic. But the culmination of his cultural revolution period

from 1973 to 1977 would sideline his political, and religious opponents, who would begin to see him as unstable, hubristic, and authoritarian. That period would instead cement Gaddafi as the sole ruler of what he would rename the socialist people's Libyan Arab Jamahiria. As recounted in Libya, the history of Gaddafi's pariah state by John Oaks, Jamahiria was a term he coined in his green book, likely inspired by Mao's Little Red book, published during the Libyan Cultural Revolution period. Jamahiriya was his idea of a state of the masses, governed by People's Congresses and Popular

Assemblies. And if it's one thing that makes a political movement, it's empowering, it's slapping the People's and Popular label on everything, regardless of any additional context. So they had these Democratic local assemblies called Basic People's Congresses that met three times a year. And those Congresses appointed executive people's committees, which did most of the day-to-day stuff. And above it all was the General People's Congress. This period was simultaneously an effort to encourage popular participation through these congresses, while suppressing dissent through his control over the secret services. It was clear that Gaddafi was still in charge, even after he stepped down from his formal position as Secretary General in 1979, and simply and,

and humbly dubbed himself the brotherly leader and guide of the revolution yeah some of his like hubristic

stuff like his rhetoric his outfit his reference to himself it's like you couldn't parody some of it it is where like

the parodies of dictators in this part of the world come from is Gaddafi's kind of effect I guess yeah

he was a character yes that he was yeah he was definitely a character. Yeah. So, I mean,

anarchist critiques of democracy are easy to find. And although Gaddafi's Libya was never solely directly democratic, even in his project, you could see some of the flaws, some of the issues that anarchists have identified in this approach to popular power.

As the Congresses or the People's Congresses were poorly attended and easily manipulated. Issues were often raised and were rarely resolved. And of course, compounding those flaws was the fact that these people's congresses had no actual power over the things that mattered in Libya. Yeah.

The oil industry. The armed forces, the security services, and foreign policy. Where Gaddafi and his compatriots still ruled. Gaddafi decided where the oil money went, and he directed some of it to a great man-made river project that would extract from the ancient and non-renewable aquifer under the Libyan Desert to supply the coast with a more stable water supply. Frustratingly for him, I could assume, Gaddafi did not get what he wanted out of the revolutionary people's congresses. So he created revolutionary committees to mobilize the people

and safeguard their rule through commandos that answered to Gaddafi directly. These revolutionary committees could arrest counter-revolutionaries, establish revolutionary courts, and eliminate enemies of the revolution at home and abroad. The people he called stray dogs. All of this for the people, of course, and for the revolution. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

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So on people, his system had some degree of people power and people voice, but in practice, he exercised near total control and suppression of opposition, both within the country and outside the country. The same went for workplaces. of course. He spoke about worker partnership and power in the Green Book, but it was a state-controlled and state-distributed economy in Libya, run by oil money, with very few worker-run enterprises. There was also no real freedom of organization or strike in Libya, as independent unions were banned, and Gaddafi explicitly rejected class struggle, despite claiming to be a socialist. So in the return of MoMAO Gaddafi by Tunisian academic Hatham Gussemi, he highlights the cult of personality that was forged over the years of Gaddafi's rule

that has resurfaced up to the sea. His proponents often point to the good that he did for the country, establishing basic social services, free health care and education, housing and land distribution, accessible loan programs, women's rights, and so on. And with that welfare state, came natural. some base of popular support for a people who had little to nothing before. Other fans of Gaddafi

points to what I like to call hype moments and aura. So there was a time when he was in the UN General Assembly and he had what was supposed to be a short time to speak and he just went on and on and on and on and on. And he tore up the UN Charter, hype moments and aura, right? And yeah.

that's like something that a lot of people point to. He was also at one point in time the chairman of the African Union and he wanted to keep that position permanently and he was proposing a whole United States of Africa like he had a whole period of African solidarity which we'll get to. Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, his pan-Africanist arc is fascinating.

Yeah, so none of this, however, erases his dark, dark side. for one, for all the women's rights that he put forward in Libya, he was not that great to women. The Green Book presents Gaddafi as someone who cared about women's dignity and rights. But even in that book, you see a very complementarist take on women's place in society. It's like, yeah, they're equal to men, but also their role is in the household. They're supposed to be mothers above everything else. Yeah. He was like, they need to be mothers, but they shouldn't be treated as property or objects.

Yeah, I think he based a lot of this in, like, his interpretation of hadith or the Quran, like, his idea that, like, there was some kind of divine guidance on gender roles, right? I've actually seen this in recent days. Like, you can go and find Hamina's tweets, right? Like Ayatollah Haminai, not his son. And, like, you can see his stuff where he's like, you should not mistreat your wife. You can literally find those in his timeline on. Twitter, right? He was a big poster. And people have somehow attempted to like construe this as

like he was a leader of enlightened feminist regime in Iran, which I don't know. It's benevolent patriarchy all over again. Yeah, like you have to be really on a special fucking truth trajectory to convince yourself that that is the case. It like it takes remarkable capacity for self-delusion, to rather than listening to women in Iran, women from Iran, many of whom I have spoken to, to look at the evidence of the killing, for example, with Jinnaharmini, right? To be like, I know, but I found this tweet from 2013, so we're good here. This is fine. It's just remarkable people's tendency to do that. Yeah, it's remarkable and stupid. Yeah, yeah, stupid is a good would. Yeah, and going back to Gaddafi, aside from that sort of benevolent patriarchy take on

women's equality, investigative reporting by Anna Kujin also gathered testimony since his fall that alleged his procurement, cohesion, and sexual abuse of women inside his compound, aided by a network of officials. Unfortunately, many of these women are far too afraid to come forward, even all these years after his death, due to the persistence of pro-Gaddafi sentiment in the country up to today. So not the best for women. What about for Africa, right? His whole Pan-Africanist arc.

Yeah. He styled himself as a Pan-African who would support the struggles of people like Mandela and would fund infrastructure projects around the continent. But he had a history of attempting to overthrow governments in Africa and support oppressive ones, including Idi Amin of Uganda and Charles Taylor of Liberia. So his pan-Africanism was never concerned with the freedom or well-being of African people. It was, I think, very much according to his own self-aggrandizement. Yeah, like, he didn't he propose like an African union which was more akin to, Like a United States, like a federal Africa.

United States of Africa. That was his proposal. Fantastic, yeah. Yeah. Great. And as he's proposing this pan-African vision, within Libya itself, he was pushing for an Arab Libya. The Amazik and other non-Arab Africans in Libya were mistreated.

You know, his vision of an Arab Libya led to the suppression of the Tuaregs, the Taboos and the Amazif. He had policies, as reported in the BBC, in New Internationalist, Al Jazeera and Oswe, he had policies that included the banning of minority languages, the banning of minority names, the discouraging of cultural expression, and sometimes denying citizenship to groups outside the Arab identity.

So naturally, many of these minorities took part in the 2011 movement, and after Gaddafi's fall, there was a revival of language, cultural institutions, and publications. However, the NTC and those it followed have continued to ignore the minority plight. Minority groups are still struggling for constitutional recognition, representation, and equal rights in a country that is, of course, still divided. And some minorities have chosen to boycott the national political process entirely in favor of pursuing local self-governance.

Also, minorities were not the only people being persecuted in Gaddafi's Libya. On the political front, despite calling himself a socialist, Gaddafi was really all over the place ideologically. Now internationally, he may have backed the Palestinian struggle, the Irish struggle, the African-American struggle, but he was consistent in suppressing actual leftists in Libya. Marxist.com identified some of these repressive efforts in their article on Gaddafi. Quote, Gaddafi was very clear in expressing his anti-communism. In 1971, he sent a plane full of Sudanese communists back to Sudan where they were executed by Nimeri. In 1973, the regime published an official document to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Gaddafi's rise to power under the title, Holy War Against Communism, end quote. Quite eccentric.

Later on, however, he would get more chummy with USSR, but Gaddafi was no Marxist nationalist. and communists and leftists and workers were not legally capable of organizing independently in Libya. Aside from them, you also had the murder and torture of civilians and journalists, the assassinations of rivals in Libya and around the world. It was not the free speech utopia that Gaddafi tried to paint it as. Instead of emboldening the leftist elements, he emboldened these tribal groups and set the foundation for the Libya. that we see today.

His consistent through line is that he likes strong men and sees himself among them and wants to associate himself with them. At some point in the early 2000s, he was supporting York Haider, a neo-fascist in Austria and telling Europeans they needed to get past their obsession

with the Second World War. He had no consistent politics. Well, I mean, that tracks with his expulsion of Jewish communities in Libya. Yeah. He didn't only have. expelled Jewish settlers. He expelled Jewish communities that had arrived prior to Italian colonization that had existed in Libya for centuries. Yeah, that maybe, I guess, anti-Semitism can often

be the link that brings terrible people together. He had a lot of other notorious incidents of suppression, but one of the most significant was the Abu Salin massacre. In short, as recounted by John Oakes, Abu Salon was the site of a prisoner's protest on the 28th of June 1996. The prisoners escaped their cells and were protesting their mistreatment as guards shot at them from the roof. Two top security officials came and took command, ordering the shooting to stop and promising to address the prisoners' complaints if they returned to their cells and gave up the guards they had hostage. And the following day, shots fired from 11 a.m. to 135 p.m. A mass slaughter of approximately 1,200,000,000.

of the 16 to 1700 prisoners in Abu Salinas. The families who suffered that blow were among the first on the streets of Benghazi, 2011. But those families were not originally told that their loved ones had been killed. Some of them continued to visit the prison for weeks, months, years after bringing gifts for the relatives who were already long dead. In the twists and turns of Gaddafi's ideological development, or lack thereof. Following the fall of the USSR, Gaddafi would also pursue economic liberalization.

He started opening up to the West, ever so slightly. There was slow progress and a brief hiccup. By 2003, free market advocate Shukri Ganim was appointed prime minister. Before long, 360 state enterprises were privatized. By 2007, Libya was laying off as many as a third of the government workforce, 400,000 public sector workers. According to a New York Times article from 2011, the IMF had actually praised Libya's economic reforms.

So why 2011 conditions were so unbearable for so many workers, especially young people, there's no wonder that some of them fought with nothing to lose. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the honest talk, I'm Jennifer Stewart.

And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John Hobe Bryant, I sit down with Tiffany the budgetista Aliche to talk about what it really. really takes to take control of your money. What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people

when they're no longer here? We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts. Too many of us were never, ever taught. Financial education is not always about, like, I'm going to get rich. That's great. It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a, a strong financial legacy for your family.

If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more. Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the I'd Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.

Russia accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues. I like the bougie style of Housewives show. I think it looks like it's going to be interesting. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise,

the drama, the alliances, and the team everybody's talking about. As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it. I understand the game. As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this. At the end of the day, when people are at home, they want entertainment. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Daniel Jeremiah.

And I'm Greg Rosenthal. And this is 40s and free agents. The games may be over, but the NFL never stopped. This is my favorite part of the calendar. Yeah, mine too, Greg. Free Agency, the Combine. The NFL draft Pro Days trades. This is where teams reshape their future.

This is where Daniel Jeremiah makes his money. On 40s and free agents, we break down every move that actually matters. From my draft evaluations, mock drafts, and team fits. To my top 101 free agents and how real rosters are built, cap space, contracts, and all the tough decisions included. You got quarterbacks on the move? We got teams rebuilding. It's hope season.

Yeah, absolutely. It's hope season. We'll tell you what's real, what's noise. and what it means for your favorite team. Smart analysis, real conversations every week. I don't know about the smart, but definitely analysis. Listen to 40s and free agents on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last aspects of Gaddafi's rule that I want to touch on was his complex relationship with Western powers.

Lillianist rule in the 70s and 80s, he did style himself an anti-imperish revolutionary, and that is the image that a lot of people uphold of him to this day. Libya funded and armed revolutionary and militant movements worldwide, from the African National Congress, or the ANC, to the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO, to the Irish Republican Army or IRA. He aligned himself with the so-called radical camp in the Middle East, including Bathis, Syria, and Iran. And Western governments accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. Libya was considered a rogue state.

but as noted by Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalmas in an interview with Jose Antonio Guterres, quote, even when Gaddafi was declaring himself an anti-imperialist long ago, it was just a lip service while he engaged as an authoritarian in trivial terrorist acts that never meant to support the libertarian objectives of the victims of imperialism, end quote. Still, Reagan called him a mad dog, and the US bombed Libya in 1986 after attacks in,

a West Berlin nightclub were attributed to Libyan agents. Those bombings narrowly missed Gaddafi himself, but they killed his adopted baby daughter. Libya was also blamed for the 1988 bombing of Pan on Flight 103 over Lockerbie, which led to sanctions by the United Nations and the US, which isolated Libya economically and diplomatically. In the 90s, however, before the USSR, Libya began solely shifting toward co-operation. They handed over the suspects in the Lockerby bombing, and sanctions began to loosen as they attempted to normalize relations. Western intelligence soon started cooperating with Libyan intelligence against Islamist militant groups,

including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is a thorn in Gaddafi side. The early 2000s had Libya renounce its weapons of mass destruction program following the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. and the U.N. subsequently lifted sanctions and diplomatic relations were restored fully with Western countries. Gaddafi hosted Tony Blair of the UK, Nicholas Sarkozy of France, and met with Obama as well. And many of these meetings with Western leaders produced multi-billion dollar energy and business deals. Yeah. BP, Royal Dot Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total Energies, they were all getting pieces of Libya's wealth. as Libya began adopting more neoliberal economic reforms like currency devaluation, trade liberalization,

and more openness to foreign investment, Libya was also able to cooperate closely with Western intelligence during war on terror, including assisting the CIA and MI6 in rendition and torture, as uncovered by Human Rights Watch. So by the mid-2000s, Libya had mostly reintegrated into the Western-led global system. And the West, for their part, simply ignored Gaddafi's continued human rights abuses. The counter-terrorism cooperation,

the oil and gas contracts, and don't forget the brutal African migrant control, were all too valuable for America and Europe. I remember this period quite well. It was when I was in my undergraduate university and Gaddafi was invited to speak. The Oxford Union, I did my undergraduate there, and myself and a number of her friends

So you met Gaddafi? No, he spoke via video conference. Okay. Which they paused while they removed us for protesting Gaddafi's. It just seemed like this decades of abuse of his own people have been completely forgotten, right? Because he was now prepared to do abuse of other people that was beneficial to the United Kingdom, the United States. And we felt like that was apparent and wrong. So we went to make our feelings.

known and the Oxan Union is a very silly institution, right? We deprive itself on free speech and really it just does kind of class reproduction for the most part. Right. And of course, like there was not freedom of speech for people who were going to be rude to someone who was in charge of a state, even if they were being rude on behalf of the thousands of people he's had murdered and tortured. And yeah, that was my little personal running with Gaddafi when I was what, like 18. But yeah, I can't remember if we were like not allowed in or we were booted out because I am like two decades and half a dozen traumatic brain injuries since my teenage years. But yeah, I do remember just being like people are treating this like as some kind of fucking novelty. And this person has real blood on his hands.

Real people have suffered tremendously and died because of actions he's taken. Like it's not funny or cute. Wow. What year was that? It would have been in the early, 2000s in the Bush era, because that's when I was in my undergraduate, second Bush term. So like it would have been bought in 2006, I'm somewhere there. Yeah, thankfully I never had any run-ins with Gaddafi.

Yeah. Even at that time, I can remember just being sort of somewhat appalled by the Marxist-Leninist tendency to excuse crimes against humanity as long as they were done by people who who said the right things, who had the right vibes, who condemned the right people, and the liberal tendency to excuse crimes against humanity so long as they were done in service of capitalism and the state. Yeah. Yeah, shockingly similar tendencies in some ways. Yeah, right, like this fundamentally not rooted in the idea that people have a right to dignity. Both of them hold people as less valuable than other things, right? Be it capital,

or, I mean, the Marxist-Lend, this tendency, honestly, like, it's not even the revolution, that they believe it's more valuable than people. It's the revolutionary rhetoric. Yeah. Like, with Assad, right? Like, you can murder your own people with chemical weapons so long as you pretend to give a single shit about Palestinians, even though you've spent decades using your weapons to kill your own people and never once use them to actually help the people of Palestine,

actually protect people. Exactly. Exactly. So at this point now, you know, Gaddafi's trying to be old chummy with the West, after he spent some time being chummy with Africa and spent some time being chummy with USSR and with rebel groups around the world. But that was just the thing, right? He had this track record of flip-flop-in, you know? And even though relations had normalized, these Western powers could not trust him. They still still saw him as that mad dog, they still saw him as unpredictable and unreliable. In fact, even while he was cutting deals with these multi-billion dollar corporations for the oil contracts and so on, when he wasn't getting what he wanted, he would threaten to nationalize to get what he wanted. And so,

to West being opportunistic, were just waiting for an opportunity. They were done with playing his game. And that opportunity came when the people organically rose up against Gaddafi in 2011. Not long after NATO intervened, and the years since, Libyans have suffered and died with no end in sight. It shouldn't be uncontroversial to say this. Gaddafi was not a true anti-imperialist. I don't think it's possible for a statesman or a government to be truly anti-imperialist. government is foundationally exploitative internally

and when turned externally that drive exploitation is what we understand as imperialism while the markers of imperialism worthy of condemnation be it economic exploitation

cultural dominance military violence etc is carried out under the label of governance when done within its own borders when done

against for example the non-Arab minorities in Libya I think what's missing from now popular anti-imperialist narratives is that connection, that analysis. And a gap in the analysis is what's creating this false consciousness that leads people to come to the conclusion that anti-imperialism means that XYZ government is anti-imperialist and good, and ABC government is imperialist and bad. That's not how the world works. States are never going to be liberatory. They're not able to produce a liberatory framework. At their best, they function as a welfare state.

At their worst, you get mass suppression and cults of personality. Sometimes you get a combination of both, as with Libya and Gaddafi. And that's my message for today. Please stop line eyes and leaders. Stay woke. Yeah. And all power to all the people. I've been Andrew Sage.

This is a good happen here. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

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