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Gaddafi: Dead or Alive? - by Stephen Lendman
Gaddafi's death is by no means confirmed. Remain skeptical until reliable sources confirm it one way or other.
Either way he became a legend in his own time. Thursday on the Progressive Radio News Hour, James Petras reported information he received from a reliable Argentina source saying he's dead.
If so, he explained, he'll be Africa's greatest martyr since Congo's Patrice Lumumba. After leading its independence struggle successfully in June 1960, a CIA coup ousted him 10 weeks later.
Joseph Mobutu replaced him, renaming the country Zaire. Looting billions until his 1997 removal, he ran it like a kleptocracy.
January 17, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of Lumumba's late night firing squad assassination. Belgium and Washington ordered it. At issue was his fierce opposition to Western colonialism. It cost him his life.
He and two associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were tied to trees and murdered in cold blood. To escape culpability, Belgium exhumed them, dismembered, and dissolved their body parts in acid.
Belgium ruled Congo until 1960. Until his 1909 death, King Leopold II ran it like his private plantation. In his book, "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa," Adam Hochschild wrote:
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