Boris Johnson's Blatant Neo-Colonialism and Neo-Imperialism

Recently British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, joked that British businessmen, not Libyans, would build cities to rival Dubai were it not for dead bodies littering Libyan streets.

The joke was in very bad taste. Let us not forget the leading role the British played in putting Libya in the problems it faces today..

On 19 March 2011 the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no fly-zone over Libya. Ostensibly as part of that enforcement British forces, with participation of their American counterparts, fired one hundred and ten Tomahawk missiles at Libya.

I am not a military expert but I have never understood Tomahawks to be capable of attacking airborne targets.

I will leave it to the experts to explain what ground attack weapons have got to do with enforcing a no-fly zone. At no point had Libya ignored the no-fly zone or fired at coalition aircraft at the time the ground attack began?

What I want to make very clear is that it was British who began the process that ultimately left Libya without effective government, leading to streets littered with dead bodies that Boris is joking about today..

Please, understand that pointing out the above is not in any way amount to praising Gadhafi.

The African Union had made proposals for a negotiated transition which would have prevented the collapse of Libya. The President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, literally had to beg the powerful Western forces to take those proposals to Gadhafi which, according to him, the later accepted.

The proposals included a ceasefire which would have saved lives and prevented bodies littering streets.

After his demise, Gadhafi's body was carted into the desert where not even one member of his family could let a tear drop on his grave let alone lay a flower. I do not know if those who did it are superstitious. If they are, I am sure they performed rituals to make sure that even his ghost could not find its way home.

Gadhafi's influence in Libya ended with his death. Most of the fighting that littered streets with bodies, took place afterwards is among the militias that were armed and sponsored by Western countries. This means that even Gadhafi's ghost cannot be blamed for the bodies that Boris is joking about.

Now that we understand the role Britain played in putting Libya in the chaotic predicament it faces today, I can not imagine anything more callous than the British foreign secretary bandying about jokes about dead Libyans.

No matter what our leadership situation in the developing world, imagined or real, we do not want it to be compounded by callous and heartless rich people who have nothing better to do with their money and weapons other than make us suffer so that they can find subjects to joke about.

Clearly Boris sees countries whose people do not prioritize making weapons as nothing more than a playgrounds of death. His joke is an exemplification of the racist indifference that his  kind regard us with. A subconscious racism that attaches little value, if any, to human beings who live in poor parts of the world.

His kind probably feel more pity for a dog that gets run over in the street, than for the Yemeni children decapitated, blinded, disfigured and maimed by the weapons his country makes and profits from. He personally takes part in the decision making that sees weapons sold and used in places like Yemen and Libya where they result in the body-littered streets that he now jokes about. It is sad, but the truth.

The toady man’s joke suggests he is more than tone-deaf, maybe brain-deaf. I must say I am strongly tempted to replace the F in deaf with a D.

The dismissive way in which Theresa May finger-waves away the episode as just a minor bad choice of words, shows that she either does not have a clue or does not care. The prime minister of Britain does not think jokes about people dying in a chaotic mess her country helped create are worth her serious attention.

To twist the knife in Libya’s back, Borizozo claims his critics have "no knowledge or understanding of Libya". I wonder whether he has more knowledge than the Libyans, from both sides of the current divide, who also complained? How could he say Libyans have no knowledge or understanding of their own country and its suffering?

My personal judgment is that it is him who has no knowledge or understanding, not just of Libya, but of the disastrous role his country played in putting Libya where it is today.

Maybe Boris should borrow a page from Barack Obama's book.  The later at least had the decency to admit that his handling of Libya was the worst mistake of his presidency.

It is unfortunate, but the fault of Boris, that I now have to juxtapose that with the indecency of him joking about Libyan streets being littered with dead bodies.

By they way if you think the rest of his speech was sensible let think of its colonialist connotations. He talked about British business people building and, by my understanding, owning prime real estate on the Libyan coast.

Can Libyan people not build and own those hotels themselves? After all they have money from their own oil. It seems in Boris’ mind only the British can own and develop that land properly in Libya.

We have to wonder, did Britain lead the way in attacking Libya so that British business people could end up owning prime properties on the Libyan?