Ghaddafi planned to stop selling oil for dollars and sell it for gold.
It would be a disaster for US, because US enjoys benefits of printing as much money as it needs to purchase anything from abroad exchanging zeros and ones that cost nothing for real natural resources and goods from other countries.
Just about any country leader that announced plans to stop using USD for trade, was killed in some way.
Or, if USA isn't brave enough to openly attack the country, they declare it "hostile" and try to suffocate using sanctions (e.g. Iran).
USA has a huge and constantly increasing trade deficit, meaning that it buy more goods and resources than it produces itself. It's an unequal trade that greatly benefits US and makes all the other world poorer with each batch of printed money.
Industry output percent in the USA GDP is small and becoming smaller with every year, while US consumes about order of magnitude more energy per capita than even EU countries.
This is why US needs most expensive army in the world and the need to rig elections, organize coups and revolutions in almost every other country.
It's not a conspiracy theory that he wanted to create a gold backed Pan-African currency. He openly promoted it. It's not a conspiracy theory that this would have very possibly undermined the petrodollar and all Western currencies. It's not a conspiracy theory that the United States and its allies have supported coups, rebellions, and the like to maintain their power in the past.
The people who believe this think we have constant secret inflation in the US, except they also think we don't have inflation because the "petrodollar" forces everyone else to absorb USD, except they also don't explain why other countries like Japan printing JPY doesn't cause inflation.
I don't think a mere thing like what currency you use stops the FBI from assuming everything in the world is their jurisdiction.
One other thing - I hate the term "conspiracy theory". It was literally coined by the CIA to discredit discussion of actual conspiracies. But that's just another crazy conspiracy theory for another HN thread.
> The Oxford English Dictionary defines conspiracy theory as "the theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties; spec. a belief that some covert but influential agency (typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent) is responsible for an unexplained event". It cites a 1909 article in The American Historical Review as the earliest usage example,[37][38] although it also appeared in print as early as April 1870.[39]
Sorry, popularized would have been more accurate. Or perhaps weaponized. The term did exist before then, but the usage wasn't prevalent, and more directed at actual "conspiracies" - multiple entities, such as businesses or political rivals, working together illicitly
The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit.
But the real smart people who have the special knowledge know that it was obviously <<insert conspiracy theory here>>.
The thing is, geopolitics is messy and there are quite a number of 'factors' many of them true to some extent. The Gulf tribal leaders absolutely hated him and they (i.e. Qatar) lent their special forces more or less as 'personal vendetta' than anything.
There are definitely arguments about Oil and related contracts - but Gaddaffi through the diplomacy of his son was well on his way to 'public reconciliation' to the point where there was a lot of money being made there, and it's entirely doubtful that some new, unknown clan would make it any easier for Westerners to make money.
If there were an obvious and very popular contender for power who was on the precipice of uniting the nation and he was already tacit 'backed by the west' - then you could make the argument that the intervention was on the style of the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, but this really wasn't that situation.
The question says more about the person asking it than the answer.
The real question to ask someone when they are talking about 'Bitcoin' is how much Bitcoin (or other crypto) do you own? Because I find it's like talking to people in Amway or Scientology.
>The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit.
>The thing is, geopolitics is messy and there are quite a number of 'factors' many of them true to some extent.
Yes, exactly. It's not that I know I am right, or that there's one answer. But it is interesting only one of the discussions is allowed, and one very plausible explanation is universally labeled as a "conspiracy theory".
>The real question to ask someone when they are talking about 'Bitcoin' is how much Bitcoin (or other crypto) do you own? Because I find it's like talking to people in Amway or Scientology.
FWIW, basically none. Might have an old wallet on the computer in my closet with ~.1 left on it, from back when I used to buy drugs off the silk road. But I'm not a crypto fanatic, though I do find it interesting.
The rhetoric used stops me from bringing it up, in certain circles. I really only can bring it up with close friends/family, or anonymously on the web. I've been called anti-semitic, racist, alt-right, my intelligence insulted. Again, related to another comment in this thread, it's seen as a "conspiracy theory". The mainstream news media didn't cover it, but certain less tasteful websites did.
I mean, you presented the theory with no evidence that it happened. Your argument is basically that the united states could have done it, had motive to do it, and has a history of doing underhanded things in the past. Even if for the sake of argument i grant all of those things, its still not any more plausible than the official story. If you don't want people to call it a conspiracy theory, get some actual evidence that they actually did do it. Saying they could have done it and might have wanted to isn't enough.
The point is not to determine the actual reason(s) - us plebs will likely never know. The point is to examine the possibility that sometimes alternative explanations to the official narrative could be plausible. Which loops back to how this all started and my original comment, that there's a narrative of electrical power usage and transparency issues - which are real. But there's other plausible explanations - political power and control. Even if the latter were true, it's unlikely the World Bank would cite them in their response.
Most of this thread stemming from my comment has been around "conspiracy theories" and such, which I find disappointing, because there is a healthy level of skepticism and distrust that should be applied to these institutions.
It would be a disaster for US, because US enjoys benefits of printing as much money as it needs to purchase anything from abroad exchanging zeros and ones that cost nothing for real natural resources and goods from other countries.
Just about any country leader that announced plans to stop using USD for trade, was killed in some way.
Or, if USA isn't brave enough to openly attack the country, they declare it "hostile" and try to suffocate using sanctions (e.g. Iran).