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The Anglo-French hostilities were ended in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which involved a complex series of land exchanges, the most important being France's cession to Spain of Louisiana, and to Great Britain the rest of New France except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Faced with the choice of retrieving e...
In India, the British retained the Northern Circars, but returned all the French trading ports. The treaty, however, required that the fortifications of these settlements be destroyed and never rebuilt, while only minimal garrisons could be maintained there, thus rendering them worthless as military bases. Combined wit...
The Treaty of Hubertusburg, between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, was signed on February 15, 1763, at a hunting lodge between Dresden and Leipzig. Negotiations had started there on December 31, 1762. Frederick, who had considered ceding East Prussia to Russia if Peter III helped him secure Saxony, finally insisted on e...
Austria was not able to retake Silesia or make any significant territorial gain. However, it did prevent Prussia from invading parts of Saxony. More significantly, its military performance proved far better than during the War of the Austrian Succession and seemed to vindicate Maria Theresa's administrative and militar...
Not only that, Austria now found herself estranged with the new developments within the empire itself. Beside the rise of Prussia, Augustus III, although ineffective, could mustered up an army not only from Saxony, but also Poland, considering the elector was also the King of Poland. Bavaria's growing power and indepen...
Prussia emerged from the war as a great power whose importance could no longer be challenged. Frederick the Great’s personal reputation was enormously enhanced, as his debt to fortune (Russia’s volte-face after Elizabeth’s death) and to the British subsidy were soon forgotten while the memory of his energy and his mili...
The British government was close to bankruptcy, and Britain now faced the delicate task of pacifying its new French-Canadian subjects as well as the many American Indian tribes who had supported France. George III's Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement beyond the crest of the Appalachians, was intended ...
The war had also brought to an end the "Old System" of alliances in Europe, In the years after the war, under the direction of Lord Sandwich, the British did try to re-establish this system. But after her surprising grand success against a coalition of great powers, European states such as Austria, The Dutch Republic, ...
Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures, including a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, and the three-volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiograp...
Richard Phillips Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in Queens, New York City, the son of Lucille (née Phillips), a homemaker, and Melville Arthur Feynman, a sales manager. His family originated from Russia and Poland; both of his parents were Ashkenazi Jews. They were not religious, and by his youth Feynman described hi...
The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new. From his mother he gained the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. As a child, he had a talent for engineering, maintained an ex...
When Richard was five years old, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, but this brother died at four weeks of age. Four years later, Richard gained a sister, Joan, and the family moved to Far Rockaway, Queens. Though separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, as they both shared a natural curiosity abo...
Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School, a school in Far Rockaway, Queens also attended by fellow Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg. Upon starting high school, Feynman was quickly promoted into a higher math class. An unspecified school-administered IQ test estimated his IQ at 123—high, but "m...
He attained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in mathematics and physics—an unprecedented feat—but did rather poorly on the history and English portions. Attendees at Feynman's first seminar included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. He received a PhD fro...
At Princeton, the physicist Robert R. Wilson encouraged Feynman to participate in the Manhattan Project—the wartime U.S. Army project at Los Alamos developing the atomic bomb. Feynman said he was persuaded to join this effort to build it before Nazi Germany developed their own bomb. He was assigned to Hans Bethe's theo...
He immersed himself in work on the project, and was present at the Trinity bomb test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through a truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful ultraviolet radiat...
Feynman's other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close an assembly of fissile material was to criticality. On completing this work he was transferred to the Oak Ridge facility, where he aided engineers in devising safety...
Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, "There wasn't anything to do there." Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers. Feynman played many jokes on colleagues. In one case he found the combin...
Feynman alludes to his thoughts on the justification for getting involved in the Manhattan project in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. He felt the possibility of Nazi Germany developing the bomb before the Allies was a compelling reason to help with its development for the U.S. He goes on to say that it was an error...
Following the completion of his PhD in 1942, Feynman held an appointment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor of physics. The appointment was spent on leave for his involvement in the Manhattan project. In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark Ingraham of the College of Letters and Scien...
After the war, Feynman declined an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, despite the presence there of such distinguished faculty members as Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel and John von Neumann. Feynman followed Hans Bethe, instead, to Cornell University, where Feynman taught theoretical phy...
Despite yet another offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, Feynman rejected the Institute on the grounds that there were no teaching duties: Feynman felt that students were a source of inspiration and teaching was a diversion during uncreative spells. Because of this, the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeto...
Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer". He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that, if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood. Feyn...
He also developed Feynman diagrams, a bookkeeping device that helps in conceptualizing and calculating interactions between particles in spacetime, including the interactions between electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. This device allowed him, and later others, to approach time reversibility and oth...
From his diagrams of a small number of particles interacting in spacetime, Feynman could then model all of physics in terms of the spins of those particles and the range of coupling of the fundamental forces. Feynman attempted an explanation of the strong interactions governing nucleons scattering called the parton mod...
After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless spin 2 field, and derived the Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational device that Feynman discovere...
Feynman was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1965. At this time in the early 1960s, Feynman exhausted himself by working on multiple major projects at the same time, including a request, while at Caltech, to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates. After three years devoted to the task, he...
In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of cargo cult science, which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty" on the part of the scientist. He ...
In the late 1980s, according to "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine", Feynman played a crucial role in developing the first massively parallel computer, and in finding innovative uses for it in numerical computations, in building neural networks, as well as physical simulations using cellular automata (such as ...
Feynman diagrams are now fundamental for string theory and M-theory, and have even been extended topologically. The world-lines of the diagrams have developed to become tubes to allow better modeling of more complicated objects such as strings and membranes. Shortly before his death, Feynman criticized string theory in...
Feynman devoted the latter half of his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to his experience on the Rogers Commission, straying from his usual convention of brief, light-hearted anecdotes to deliver an extended and sober narrative. Feynman's account reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executive...
Although born to and raised by parents who were Ashkenazi, Feynman was not only an atheist, but declined to be labelled Jewish. He routinely refused to be included in lists or books that classified people by race. He asked to not be included in Tina Levitan's The Laureates: Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize, writing, "...
While pursuing his PhD at Princeton, Feynman married his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum (often misspelled "Arlene"), despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tuberculosis—an incurable disease at the time. She died in 1945. In 1946, Feynman wrote a letter to her, expressing his deep love and heart...
Feynman had a great deal of success teaching Carl, using, for example, discussions about ants and Martians as a device for gaining perspective on problems and issues. He was surprised to learn that the same teaching devices were not useful with Michelle. Mathematics was a common interest for father and son; they both e...
Feynman traveled to Brazil, where he gave courses at the BCPF (Brazilian Center for Physics Research) and near the end of his life schemed to visit the Russian land of Tuva, a dream that, because of Cold War bureaucratic problems, never became reality. The day after he died, a letter arrived for him from the Soviet gov...
According to Genius, the James Gleick-authored biography, Feynman tried LSD during his professorship at Caltech. Somewhat embarrassed by his actions, he largely sidestepped the issue when dictating his anecdotes; he mentions it in passing in the "O Americano, Outra Vez" section, while the "Altered States" chapter in Su...
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he gives advice on the best way to pick up a girl in a hostess bar. At Caltech, he used a nude or topless bar as an office away from his usual office, making sketches or writing physics equations on paper placemats. When the county officials tried to close the place, all visitors ...
In a 1992 New York Times article on Feynman and his legacy, James Gleick recounts the story of how Murray Gell-Mann described what has become known as "The Feynman Algorithm" or "The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm" to a student: "The student asks Gell-Mann about Feynman's notes. Gell-Mann says no, Dick's methods are...
The Feynman Lectures on Physics is perhaps his most accessible work for anyone with an interest in physics, compiled from lectures to Caltech undergraduates in 1961–64. As news of the lectures' lucidity grew, professional physicists and graduate students began to drop in to listen. Co-authors Robert B. Leighton and Mat...
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي‎ Arabic pronunciation: [muʕamar al.qaðaːfiː]; /ˈmoʊ.əmɑːr ɡəˈdɑːfi/; audio (help·info); c. 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi,[b] was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revol...
The son of an impoverished Bedouin goat herder, Gaddafi became involved in politics while at school in Sabha, subsequently enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. Founding a revolutionary cell within the military, in 1969 they seized power from the absolute monarchy of King Idris in a bloodless coup. Becomin...
In 1977, Gaddafi dissolved the Republic and created a new socialist state, the Jamahiriya ("state of the masses"). Officially adopting a symbolic role in governance, he retained power as military commander-in-chief and head of the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing opponents. Overseeing u...
Muammar Gaddafi was born in a tent near Qasr Abu Hadi, a rural area outside the town of Sirte in the deserts of western Libya. His family came from a small, relatively un-influential tribal group called the Qadhadhfa, who were Arabized Berber in heritage. His father, Mohammad Abdul Salam bin Hamed bin Mohammad, was kno...
From childhood, Gaddafi was aware of the involvement of European colonialists in Libya; his nation was occupied by Italy, and during the North African Campaign of World War II it witnessed conflict between Italian and British troops. According to later claims, Gaddafi's paternal grandfather, Abdessalam Bouminyar, was k...
Gaddafi's earliest education was of a religious nature, imparted by a local Islamic teacher. Subsequently moving to nearby Sirte to attend elementary school, he progressed through six grades in four years. Education in Libya was not free, but his father thought it would greatly benefit his son despite the financial str...
Gaddafi organized demonstrations and distributed posters criticizing the monarchy. In October 1961, he led a demonstration protesting Syria's secession from the United Arab Republic. During this they broke windows of a local hotel accused of serving alcohol. Catching the authorities' attention, they expelled his family...
Gaddafi briefly studied History at the University of Libya in Benghazi, before dropping out to join the military. Despite his police record, in 1963 he began training at the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi, alongside several like-minded friends from Misrata. The armed forces offered the only opportunity for upward soc...
The Bovington signal course's director reported that Gaddafi successfully overcame problems learning English, displaying a firm command of voice procedure. Noting that Gaddafi's favourite hobbies were reading and playing football, he thought him an "amusing officer, always cheerful, hard-working, and conscientious." Ga...
Many teachers at Sabha were Egyptian, and for the first time Gaddafi had access to pan-Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts, most notably the Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs. Growing up, Gaddafi witnessed significant events rock the Arab world, including the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the Su...
Idris' government was increasingly unpopular by the latter 1960s; it had exacerbated Libya's traditional regional and tribal divisions by centralising the country's federal system in order to take advantage of the country's oil wealth, while corruption and entrenched systems of patronage were widespread throughout the ...
In mid-1969, Idris travelled abroad to spend the summer in Turkey and Greece. Gaddafi's Free Officers recognized this as their chance to overthrow the monarchy, initiating "Operation Jerusalem". On 1 September, they occupied airports, police depots, radio stations and government offices in Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi...
Having removed the monarchical government, Gaddafi proclaimed the foundation of the Libyan Arab Republic. Addressing the populace by radio, he proclaimed an end to the "reactionary and corrupt" regime, "the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all." Due to the coup's bloodless nature, it was initially labelled...
Although theoretically a collegial body operating through consensus building, Gaddafi dominated the RCC, although some of the others attempted to constrain what they saw as his excesses. Gaddafi remained the government's public face, with the identities of the other RCC members only being publicly revealed on 10 Januar...
The coup completed, the RCC proceeded with their intentions of consolidating the revolutionary government and modernizing the country. They purged monarchists and members of Idris' Senussi clan from Libya's political world and armed forces; Gaddafi believed this elite were opposed to the will of the Libyan people and h...
In May 1970, the Revolutionary Intellectuals Seminar was held to bring intellectuals in line with the revolution, while that year's Legislative Review and Amendment united secular and religious law codes, introducing sharia into the legal system. Ruling by decree, the RCC maintained the monarchy's ban on political part...
With crude oil as the country's primary export, Gaddafi sought to improve Libya's oil sector. In October 1969, he proclaimed the current trade terms unfair, benefiting foreign corporations more than the Libyan state, and by threatening to reduce production, in December Jalloud successfully increased the price of Libyan...
Increasing state control over the oil sector, the RCC began a program of nationalization, starting with the expropriation of British Petroleum's share of the British Petroleum-N.B. Hunt Sahir Field in December 1971. In September 1973, it was announced that all foreign oil producers active in Libya were to be nationaliz...
The RCC attempted to suppress regional and tribal affiliation, replacing it with a unified pan-Libyan identity. In doing so, they tried discrediting tribal leaders as agents of the old regime, and in August 1971 a Sabha military court tried many of them for counter-revolutionary activity. Long-standing administrative b...
The RCC implemented measures for social reform, adopting sharia as a basis. The consumption of alcohol was banned, night clubs and Christian churches were shut down, traditional Libyan dress was encouraged, while Arabic was decreed as the only language permitted in official communications and on road signs. From 1969 t...
The influence of Nasser's Arab nationalism over the RCC was immediately apparent. The administration was instantly recognized by the neighbouring Arab nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Sudan, with Egypt sending experts to aid the inexperienced RCC. Gaddafi propounded Pan-Arab ideas, proclaiming the need for...
After Nasser died in November 1970, his successor, Anwar Sadat, suggested that rather than a unified state, they create a political federation, implemented in April 1971; in doing so, Egypt, Syria and Sudan got large grants of Libyan oil money. In February 1972, Gaddafi and Sadat signed an unofficial charter of merger,...
After the 1969 coup, representatives of the Four Powers – France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union – were called to meet RCC representatives. The U.K. and U.S. quickly extended diplomatic recognition, hoping to secure the position of their military bases in Libya and fearing further instabilit...
Moving to reduce Italian influence, in October 1970 all Italian-owned assets were expropriated and the 12,000-strong Italian community expelled from Libya alongside a smaller number of Jews. The day became a national holiday. Aiming to reduce NATO power in the Mediterranean, in 1971 Libya requested that Malta cease to ...
His relationship with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of Fatah was strained, with Gaddafi considering him too moderate and calling for more violent action. Instead he supported militia like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democrati...
Gaddafi financially supported other militant groups across the world, including the Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam, Tupamaros, 19th of April Movement and Sandinista National Liberation Front in the Americas, the ANC among other liberation movements in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa, the Provisional I...
On 16 April 1973, Gaddafi proclaimed the start of a "Popular Revolution" in a Zuwarah speech. He initiated this with a 5-point plan, the first point of which dissolved all existing laws, to be replaced by revolutionary enactments. The second point proclaimed that all opponents of the revolution had to be removed, while...
As part of this Popular Revolution, Gaddafi invited Libya's people to found General People's Committees as conduits for raising political consciousness. Although offering little guidance for how to set up these councils, Gaddafi claimed that they would offer a form of direct political participation that was more democr...
The People's Committees led to a high percentage of public involvement in decision making, within the limits permitted by the RCC, but exacerbated tribal divisions. They also served as a surveillance system, aiding the security services in locating individuals with views critical of the RCC, leading to the arrest of Ba...
In June 1973, Gaddafi created a political ideology as a basis for the Popular Revolution. Third International Theory considered the U.S. and the Soviet Union as imperialist, thus rejected Western capitalism as well as Eastern bloc communism's atheism. In this respect it was similar to the Three Worlds Theory developed ...
Gaddafi summarized Third International Theory in three short volumes published between 1975 and 1979, collectively known as The Green Book. Volume one was devoted to the issue of democracy, outlining the flaws of representative systems in favour of direct, participatory GPCs. The second dealt with Gaddafi's beliefs reg...
In September 1975, Gaddafi purged the army, arresting around 200 senior officers, and in October he founded the clandestine Office for the Security of the Revolution. In 1976, student demonstrations broke out in Tripoli and Benghazi, and were attacked by police and Gaddafist students. The RCC responded with mass arrest...
Following Anwar Sadat's ascension to the Egyptian presidency, Libya's relations with Egypt deteriorated. Sadat was perturbed by Gaddafi's unpredictability and insistence that Egypt required a cultural revolution. In February 1973, Israeli forces shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114, which had strayed from Egyptian...
Gaddafi was later infuriated when Egypt and Syria planned the Yom Kippur War against Israel without consulting him, and was angered when Egypt conceded to peace talks rather than continuing the war. Gaddafi become openly hostile to Egypt's leader, calling for Sadat's overthrow, and when Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeir...
Gaddafi sought to develop closer links in the Maghreb; in January 1974 Libya and Tunisia announced a political union, the Arab Islamic Republic. Although advocated by Gaddafi and Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, the move was deeply unpopular in Tunisia and soon abandoned. Retaliating, Gaddafi sponsored anti-governme...
On 2 March 1977 the General People's Congress adopted the "Declaration of the Establishment of the People's Authority" at Gaddafi's behest. Dissolving the Libyan Arab Republic, it was replaced by the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Arabic: الجماهيرية العربية الليبية الشعبية الاشتراكية‎, al-Jamāhīrīyah ...
Debate remained limited, and major decisions regarding the economy and defence were avoided or dealt with cursorily; the GPC largely remained "a rubber stamp" for Gaddafi's policies. On rare occasions, the GPC opposed Gaddafi's suggestions, sometimes successfully; notably, when Gaddafi called on primary schools to be a...
With preceding legal institutions abolished, Gaddafi envisioned the Jamahiriya as following the Qur'an for legal guidance, adopting sharia law; he proclaimed "man-made" laws unnatural and dictatorial, only permitting Allah's law. Within a year he was backtracking, announcing that sharia was inappropriate for the Jamahi...
In December 1978, Gaddafi stepped down as Secretary-General of the GPC, announcing his new focus on revolutionary rather than governmental activities; this was part of his new emphasis on separating the apparatus of the revolution from the government. Although no longer in a formal governmental post, he adopted the tit...
Libya began to turn towards socialism. In March 1978, the government issued guidelines for housing redistribution, attempting to ensure the population that every adult Libyan owned his own home and that nobody was enslaved to paying their rent. Most families were banned from owning more than one house, while former ren...
On 2 March 1979, the GPC announced the separation of government and revolution, the latter being represented by new Revolutionary Committees, who operated in tandem with the People's Committees in schools, universities, unions, the police force and the military. Dominated by revolutionary zealots, the Revolutionary Com...
In 1979, the committees began the redistribution of land in the Jefara plain, continuing through 1981. In May 1980, measures to redistribute and equalize wealth were implemented; anyone with over 1000 dinar in his bank account saw that extra money expropriated. The following year, the GPC announced that the government ...
The Jamahiriya's radical direction earned the government many enemies. In February 1978, Gaddafi discovered that his head of military intelligence was plotting to kill him, and began to increasingly entrust security to his Qaddadfa tribe. Many who had seen their wealth and property confiscated turned against the admini...
In 1979, the U.S. placed Libya on its list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism", while at the end of the year a demonstration torched the U.S. embassy in Tripoli in solidarity with the perpetrators of the Iran hostage crisis. The following year, Libyan fighters began intercepting U.S. fighter jets flying over the Mediterra...
The early and mid-1980s saw economic trouble for Libya; from 1982 to 1986, the country's annual oil revenues dropped from $21 billion to $5.4 billion. Focusing on irrigation projects, 1983 saw construction start on "Gaddafi's Pet Project", the Great Man-Made River; although designed to be finished by the end of the dec...
In 1981, the new US President Ronald Reagan pursued a hard line approach to Libya, erroneously considering it a puppet regime of the Soviet Union. In turn, Gaddafi played up his commercial relationship with the Soviets, visiting Moscow again in April 1981 and 1985, and threatening to join the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets w...
After the U.S. accused Libya of orchestrating the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, in which two American soldiers died, Reagan decided to retaliate militarily. The Central Intelligence Agency were critical of the move, believing that Syria were a greater threat and that an attack would strengthen Gaddafi's reputation; ...
The late 1980s saw a series of liberalising economic reforms within Libya designed to cope with the decline in oil revenues. In May 1987, Gaddafi announced the start of the "Revolution within a Revolution", which began with reforms to industry and agriculture and saw the re-opening of small business. Restrictions were ...
In the aftermath of the 1986 U.S. attack, the army was purged of perceived disloyal elements, and in 1988, Gaddafi announced the creation of a popular militia to replace the army and police. In 1987, Libya began production of mustard gas at a facility in Rabta, although publicly denying it was stockpiling chemical weap...
In 1989, Gaddafi was overjoyed by the foundation of the Arab Maghreb Union, uniting Libya in an economic pact with Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, viewing it as beginnings of a new Pan-Arab union. Meanwhile, Libya stepped up its support for anti-western militants such as the Provisional IRA, and in 1988, Pan ...
As the 20th century came to a close, Gaddafi increasingly rejected Arab nationalism, frustrated by the failure of his Pan-Arab ideals; instead he turned to Pan-Africanism, emphasising Libya's African identity. From 1997 to 2000, Libya initiated cooperative agreements or bilateral aid arrangements with 10 African states...
The era saw Libya's return to the international arena. In 1999, Libya began secret talks with the British government to normalise relations. In 2001, Gaddafi condemned the September 11 attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaeda, expressing sympathy with the victims and calling for Libyan involvement in the War on Terror against m...
Libya's economy witnessed increasing privatization; although rejecting the socialist policies of nationalized industry advocated in The Green Book, government figures asserted that they were forging "people's socialism" rather than capitalism. Gaddafi welcomed these reforms, calling for wide-scale privatization in a Ma...
Following the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, Gaddafi spoke out in favour of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, then threatened by the Tunisian Revolution. He suggested that Tunisia's people would be satisfied if Ben Ali introduced a Jamahiriyah system there. Fearing domestic protest, Libya's government impl...
Accusing the rebels of being "drugged" and linked to al-Qaeda, Gaddafi proclaimed that he would die a martyr rather than leave Libya. As he announced that the rebels would be "hunted down street by street, house by house and wardrobe by wardrobe", the army opened fire on protests in Benghazi, killing hundreds. Shocked ...
In the conflict's early months it appeared that Gaddafi's government – with its greater firepower – would be victorious. Both sides disregarded the laws of war, committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions and revenge attacks. On 26 February the United Nations Security ...
A week after the implementation of the no-fly zone, NATO announced that it would be enforced. On 30 April a NATO airstrike killed Gaddafi's sixth son and three of his grandsons in Tripoli, though Gaddafi and his wife were unharmed. Western officials remained divided over whether Gaddafi was a legitimate military target...
On 27 June, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and his brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi, head of state security, for charges concerning crimes against humanity. Libyan officials rejected the ICC, claiming that it had "no legitimacy whatsoever" and highlighting that "all of its activities ...
Now with NATO support in the form of air cover, the rebel militia pushed westward, defeating loyalist armies and securing control of the centre of the country. Gaining the support of Amazigh (Berber) communities of the Nafusa Mountains, who had long been persecuted as non-Arabic speakers under Gaddafi, the NTC armies s...
Only a few towns in western Libya—such as Bani Walid, Sebha and Sirte—remained Gaddafist strongholds. Retreating to Sirte after Tripoli's fall, Gaddafi announced his willingness to negotiate for a handover to a transitional government, a suggestion rejected by the NTC. Surrounding himself with bodyguards, he continuall...