From the files

A reader pointed out to me in 2004 that Khaddafi, having come in from the cold in 2003, had turned to internet punditry. I blogged in 2004:

Question: Whose website is this really? A reader writes:

The best thing I ever read about Turkey & the EU was an article by none other than..... Mumar Qaddafi. Check his website out:

http://www.algathafi.org/turkey-eng.html

It's statesmen-like in its forbearance. It almost makes me forget he's a crazy dictator. The multiple self-ingratiating posed photos on his website homepage keep me grounded, though.

This is very strange. Here's another not unreasonable op-ed by the old mad bomber on how to solve the Korean problem. Has Khaddafi actually taken up punditry in his old age? (He seems to be about as good at it as, say, Thomas Friedman or Jim Hoagland and better than William Safire or Frank Rich.) Is this some kind of PR offensive by Gadaffi's minions? Or is this a hoax?

Update: My reader writes:

Another thing that points to it being my main man Muammar is that the Africa thing is front and center. He has this obsession with uniting Africa politically (under guess who's rule?) He seems to have swapped pan-Arabism for pan-Africanism. It's been really pissing off his subjects. He's opened up immigration and his principal cities are being more and more subjected to black immigration. They aren't happy about it. 

If you read his silly essay on Africa it goes in for some anti-colonialism red meat and then presents the problem that elections have led to the problem of "power rotation" where perpetual changes in leadership bring "instability" and so no dynamic progress can be made. I see where he's going with this.

Oh dear, with all the power rotation leading to instability who can save us Africans? If only there was a man who could unite us and provide us with stability WITHOUT pesky "power rotations". But WHO?

Commenter Gwern helpfully adds:

The links are broken, but all seem to be old enough that you can get at them via the Internet Archive, for example the first two are http://web.archive.org/web/20041204020447/http://www.algathafi.org/turkey-eng.html & http://web.archive.org/web/20041207005534/http://www.algathafi.org/kurea-issue.htm

Here's Kaddafi's root directory for all his musings. Did he write them himself? I dunno, but I sort of think he did. The notion that he's a bright guy with ADHD seems plausible.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer