Burned-out The Green Book centre in Benghazi's downtown during the 2011 Libyan Civil War. The Green Book (Arabic: الكتاب الأخضر ) is a short book setting out the political philosophy of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The book was first published in 1975. It was "intended to be read for all people."[1] It is said to have been inspired in part by The Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao2][3] Both were widely distributed both inside and outside their country of origin, and "written in a simple, understandable style with many memorable slogans."[4] An English translation was issued by the Libyan People's Committee,[5] and a bilingual English/Arabic edition was issued in London by Martin, Brian & O'Keeffe in 1976. During the Libyan Civil War, copies of the book were burned by anti-Gaddafi demonstrator According to British author and former Greater London Council member George Tremlett, Libyan children spent two hours a week studying the book as part of their curriculu
m.[7] Extracts were broadcast every day on television and radio.[7] Its slogans were also found on billboards and painted on buildings in Liby By 1993 lectures and seminars on The Green Book had been held at universities and colleges in France, Eastern Europe, Colombia, and Venezuel The Green Book consists of three parts and has 110 pages with 200 words or more on each pag The Green Book rejects modern liberal democracy based on electing representatives as well as capitalism. Instead, it proposes a type of direct democracy overseen by the General People's Committee which allows direct political participation for all adult citizen The book states that "Freedom of expression is the natural right of every person, even if they choose to behave irrationally, to express his or her insanity."[9] The Green Book states that freedom of speech is based upon public ownership of book publishers, newspapers, television, and radio stations, on the grounds that private ownership would be undemocrati
A paragraph in the book about abolishing money is similar to a paragraph in Frederick Engels' "Principles of Communism,"[10] Gaddafi wrote: "The final step is when the new socialist society reaches the stage where profit and money disappear. "It is through transforming society into a fully productive society, and through reaching in production a level where the material needs of the members of society are satisfied. On that final stage, profit will automatically disappear and there will be no need for money George Tremlett has called the resulting media dull and lacking in a clash of ideas.[7] Dartmouth College Professor Dirk Vandewalle describes the book as more a collection of aphorisms rather than a systematic argument.[1] U.S. Ambassador David Mack called the book quite jumbled, with various ideas including "a fair amount of xenophobia" wrapped up in "strange mixture Writing for the British Broadcasting Corporation, the journalist Martin Asser described the book as follows: "The theory claims to solve the contradictions inherent in capitalism and communism..
. In fact, it is little more than a series of fatuous diatribes, and it is bitterly ironic that a text whose professed objective is to break the shackles... has been used instead to subjugate an entire population The book caused a scandal in 1987, when West German ice hockey club ECD Iserlohn, led by Heinz Weifenbach, signed a US$900,000 advertising deal for the boo In 2015, the book Staging Memory by Stefania Del Monte dedicates a whole section to The Green Boo ^ al-Gaddafi, Muammar (1976) The Green Book People's Committee, Libya. ^ a b c d e f g h ^ Principles of Communism, Frederick Engels, 1847, Section 18. "Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain." ^ al-Gaddafi, Muammar (1976) The Green Book, The Solution of the Economic Problem: Socialism People's Committee, Libya.
In 1975, Gaddafi outlined his political tenets inFrom the Libyan dictator’s views on women and breastfeeding to why "the black race [will] prevail," Andrew Roberts offers a speed read. full coverage of Libya’s uprising.Watching Colonel Gaddafi’s public statements over the past two weeks, especially his long rants comparing his political role with that of Queen Elizabeth II and his TV interview claiming that all Libyans love him except those given hallucinogenic drugs by al Qaeda, one might be forgiven for assuming that the looming prospect of death or exile has sent him mad. Comparisons with Bruno Ganz’s superb portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the movie Downfall, as the Red army closes in on the Fuhrerbunker in April 1945, are unavoidable. Yet in fact utter irrationality has long been the leitmotif of Gaddafi’s thought, as is proved by his 1975 work of political and social philosophy, The Green Book.Like Chairman Mao’s little red book, Gaddafi encapsulated his most profound thoughts in a short book that was to be required reading—enforced required reading—for all his people.
I had the misfortune of having nothing else to read due to a baggage mix-up during a trip to Libya two years ago, and so am one of the few non-Libyans to have readAfter resigning the premiership of Libya in 1972, and taking on the catchy official title of “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” Gaddafi wrote The Green Book, which instantly became a No. 1 bestseller. The book’s mélange of banalities, non-sequiturs, nuttiness, Socialism, Islamicism and pseudo-intellectualism explains much about Gaddafi. When we see huge concrete representations of the green book being pushed over and smashed to pieces by Libyans on our TV screens, they are in fact not performing acts of vandalism so much as of perceptive literary criticism. So here are my top 10 quotes from a book that is subtitled “The Solution to the Problems of Democracy; The Social Basis to the Third Universal Theory,” under the precepts of which Gaddafi forced a nation to live for over four decades.
The Top 10 Quotes From Gaddafi’s“Women, like men, are human beings. This is an incontestable truth… Women are different from men in form because they are females, just as all females in the kingdom of plants and animals differ from the male of their species… According to gynecologists women, unlike men, menstruate each month… Since men cannot be impregnated they do not experience the ailments that women do. She breastfeeds for nearly two years.”2. “There are inevitable cycles of social history: the yellow race’s domination of the world, when it came from Asia, and the white race’s attempts at colonizing extensive areas of all continents of the world. Now, it is the turn of the black race to prevail in the world.”3. “While it is democratically not permissible for an individual to own any information or publishing medium, all individuals have a natural right to self-expression by any means, even if such means were insane and meant to prove a person’s insanity.”
4. “Mandatory education is a coercive education that suppresses freedom. To impose specific teaching materials is a dictatorial act.”5. “If a community of people wears white on a mournful occasion and another dresses in black, then one community would like white and dislike black and the other would like black and dislike white. Moreover, this attitude leaves a physical effect on the cells as well as on the genes in the body.”6. “Sporting clubs which constitute the traditional sports institutions in the world today are rapacious social instruments. The grandstands of public athletic fields are actually constructed to obstruct access to the fields.”7. “Placing a child in a day nursery is coercive and tyrannical and a violation of the child’s free and natural disposition.”8. “Labour in return for wages is virtually the same as enslaving a human being. In a socialist society no person may own a private means of transportation for the purpose of renting to others, because this represents controlling the needs of others.”
9. “The democratic system is a cohesive structure whose foundation stones are firmly laid one above the other, the Basic People’s Conferences, the People’s Conferences, and the People’s Committees, which finally come together when the General People’s Conference convenes. There is absolutely no conception of democratic society other than this.”10. “No representation of the people—representation is a falsehood. The mere existence of parliaments underlies the absence of the people, for democracy can only exist with the presence of the people and not in the presence of representatives of the people.”“Freedom of expression,” Gaddafi also wrote in The Green Book, ‘is the right of every natural person, even if a person chooses to behave irrationally to express his or her insanity.”The Colonel himself has certainly taken full advantage of that particular freedom. Let us hope that he now acts out in person the title of his only other major foray into the publishing world, his 1998 book of short stories,