Brother Leader Qathafi: King of Kings (of Africa)

Today, Col. Qathafi of Libya gave a speech at Meiji University over satellite link-up.

It was madness.

I will briefly discuss three different madness's. The Madness of Qathafi (as expected), the Madness of the Japanese (less expected), and a bit of personal Madness.

Qathafi started the satellite lecture by looking bored and reading a report without making eye contact or acknowledging the audience...despite having previously requested (or demanded) "thunderous applause" upon entering the chamber (his personal library). He completely blanked the Prof. Fukuda (more later) during the greeting.

His lecture began by lecturing at the Japanese. Specifically, he queried why does Japan continue to be friends with the US - a country which used nuclear weapons on Japanese nationals not to long ago. Apart from the hypocrisy of his recent reproachment with the US, Libyia's own previous designs on acquiring nuclear weapons ought to have given the audience pause for thought.

But no. The Japanese were also mad, sycophantically so. Prof. Fukuda said "It is great, and so true. America has killed many thousands of Japanese with the nuclear weapon, why are we interested in being friends with them?" Oh dear.

Qudafi continued by presenting his "the future map of the world." Peter Katzenstein's, "A world of regions" ought to include this map for truly - the world had been divided up into five regions; EU, Africa, North America, South America, Russia Plus and a then a scattered few others. It is a well known fact that Quthafi loves regionalism, but even he projected that Japan, China and Korea would remain independent even his future map of the world. If Col Qathafi sees a lack of political regionalism in East Asia - why does Hatoyama proclaim it?

Qathafi also proposed a new country be formed by merging Israel and Palastine. It would be called Isratine. Madness.

Then it was time for questions. Insanely, these questions from the floor were not vetted. Here was a prefect opportunity for a Japanese to ask about nuclear weapons, or Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead we got questions about education, Obama as a Muslim, and from a Malaysian exchange student "why is not the Israel-Palastine problem solved when Africa/Arab Zone has all the oil and manpower?" (Qathadi said, have you considered the role of the US?)

The soft-pitching of questions is unforgivable enough, but as if to make even clearer who was top dog, the Japanese were told to greet the Col. with "Leader Qathadi." Firstly, English is neither the first language of either Libya or Japan so why "Leader"? Secondly, the Japanese put their addresses after the name, meaning that Col. Qathafi was greeted rather cutely as "Qathafi-ReeDaa."

Oh, And then the Japanese at Meiji invited Qathafi to come in person to give a lecture, and offered to set-up an Col. Qathafi Chair at the Peace and Disarmament Center. This was said with straight face. Prof. Fukuda thanked Qathafi for his great words of wisdom and it was over.

The last bit of madness was personal. I really wanted to ask Col. Qathadi a question, a really difficult question. I wonder why, sort of like mountain climbing I guess. In the end, I found watching others much more interesting.