Unlimited MENA Revolt Thread

[BadBeast]

...is because no-one knows how to spell his fucking name correctly.

Right now there is a totally unaware passport control officer somewhere saying "I hope your enjoy your visit to our country, Mr. Kaddafiye."

Incidentally, before the rumours of fleeing began, it was said Libya was paying pro-regime mercenaries around $500/day, which is significantly higher than in Egypt.  Nevertheless, the Libyan Air Force refused to bomb protestors, and protestors have apparently captured a tank.  And Benghazi tribes are threatening to cut off Libyan oil from reaching the West unless the violence stops.

All of this makes it my favourite North African Revolution so far, especially since the protestors may end up doing a victory lap around a burnt down palace in a tank for the world media to see.

Here's his name, and Titilular address, from when he assumed the Presidency,

"Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution" and "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya"   

[Requia ☣]

However you spell his name, he's apparently vowed to fight to the bitter end.

[BadBeast]

Either he'll kill every person in Libya, just to be on the safe side, or someone will slot him in the attempt. Or he could claim Asylum. In Scotland, maybe?

I kin heer the Circus a'comin up the road!

[Requia ☣]

Given that he used to fund the IRA, I don't think Asylum in the UK would be a great move on his part.

On the other hand, it'd be amusing to watch, from a safe distance.

[Faust]

Given that he used to fund the IRA, I don't think Asylum in the UK would be a great move on his part.

On the other hand, it'd be amusing to watch, from a safe distance.

The greeks love him, he could well go to Crete.

[Adios]

If the U.S. military were to intervene in an increasingly chaotic Libya, it would most likely be part of a NATO action in which Libyan bloodshed has reached a humanitarian crisis, analysts said Thursday.

As reports emerged Thursday about deadly clashes between leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces and anti-government protesters in the town of Zawiya near Tunisia, analysts highlighted how Gadhafi has already pledged to fight a rebellion to martyrdom.

Military intervention "is something which I hope doesn't happen, but it looks as though at some point that it should happen," said Simon Henderson, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/24/libya.military.intervention/index.html?hpt=T1

[Cain]

He'd likely go to Italy first, then to a suitably neutral country.  Libya has surprisingly good relations with the country, despite their shared past, and Gadaffi and Berlusconi get on personally quite well.

[Cain]

The idea that "we" should intervene in Libya has now reached fever pitch, with David Cameron doing his best Blair impression and vowing he will not abandon the revolutionaries (well, yes, because to abandon them would imply you supported them in the first case, which blatantly wasn't the case, what with the SAS training Libyan commandos and all).

Apparently, that this idea is being heavily promoted by the same geniuses behind the PNAC is not raising many alarm bells in media or policy circles.

Neither is the fact that the revolutionaries are, well, revolutionary.  To go full-tilt rebellion you need to be a little crazy, passionate and bloodthirsty.  They really wanna put Gaddafi's head on a spike, and wave it around for everyone to see.  If they storm Tripoli and find a bunch of Marines ninja'd in and did it first, any intervening force will probably find itself fighting loyalists and revolutionaries.  The pernicious idea that anti-Gaddafi = pro-America/Europe + we have to do something needs to be stamped on, hard.  Given the support we've given to the Libyan regime since 2003, I wouldn't blame the protestors (many of whom do not speak English, and so are ignoring the many English speaking declarations of support) for thinking we were coming in to defend our investment. 

Also, intervening in Libya, with its oil and gas deposits, when not intervening in Egypt or Tunisia, which lack this mineral wealth, will further confirm many suspicions. 

Truck medicine, food and guns to the revolutionaries, sure.  Hell, give them some howitzers and let them go crazy on the ringed tank defenses around Tripoli.  But there really are some things people just need to do for themselves, and beheading their own former dictator is one of them.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

FFS.

Drop loads of rifles and RPGs around the country, smile, and wish them the best of luck.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

there really are some things people just need to do for themselves, and beheading their own former dictator is one of them.

Fuckin NEWSFEED!

[Telarus]

 

"To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth."
-William S Burroughs

Edit for Quote Context: It's really nice to have a place to find other people not glamoured by the Matador.

[Cain]

Pepe Escobar lays down the law http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC03Ak03.html

Forget "democracy"; Libya, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, is an oil power. Many a plush office of United States and European elites will be salivating at the prospect of taking advantage of a small window of opportunity afforded by the anti-Muammar Gaddafi revolution to establish - or expand - a beachhead. There's all that oil, of course. There's also the allure, close by, of the US$10 billion, 4,128 kilometer long Trans-Saharan gas pipeline from Nigeria to Algeria, expected to be online in 2015.

Thus the world, once again, is reintroduced to war porn, history as farce, a bad rerun of "shock and awe". Everyone - the United Nations, the US, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - is up in arms about a no-fly zone. Special forces are on the move, as are US warships.

Breathless US senators compare Libya with Yugoslavia. Tony "The Return of the Living Dead" Blair is back in missionary zeal form, its mirror image played by British Prime Minister David Cameron, duly mocked by Gaddafi's son, the "modernizer" Saif al-Islam. There's fear of "chemical weapons". Welcome back to humanitarian imperialism - on crack.

And like a character straight out of Scary Movie, even war-on-Iraq-architect Paul Wolfowitz wants a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, as the Foreign Policy Initiative - the son of the Project for the New American Century - publishes an open letter to US President Barack Obama demanding military boots to turn Libya into a protectorate ruled by NATO in the name of the "international community".

The mere fact that all these people are supporting the Libya protesters makes it all stink to - over the rainbow - high heavens. Sending His Awesomeness Charlie Sheen to whack Gaddafi would seem more believable.

It was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to introduce a note of sanity, describing the notion of a no-fly zone over Libya as "superfluous". This means in practice a Russian veto at the UN Security Council. Earlier, China had already changed the conversation.

In their Sheen-style hysteria - with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton desperately offering "any kind of assistance" - Western politicians did not bother to consult with the people who are risking their lives to overthrow Gaddafi. At a press conference in Benghazi, the spokesman for the brand new Libyan National Transitional Council, human-rights lawyer Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, was blunt, "We are against any foreign intervention or military intervention in our internal affairs ... This revolution will be completed by our people."

The people in question, by the way, are protecting Libya's oil industry, and even loading supertankers destined to Europe and China. The people in question do not have much to do with opportunists such as former Gaddafi-appointed justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who wants a provisional government to prepare for elections in three months. Moreover, the people in question, as al-Jazeera has reported, have been saying they don't want foreign intervention for a week now.

The Benghazi council prefers to describe itself as the "political face for the revolution", organizing civic affairs, and not established as an interim government. Meanwhile, a military committee of officer defectors is trying to set up a skeleton army to be sent to Tripoli; through tribal contacts, they seem to have already infiltrated small cells into the vicinity of Tripoli.

Whether this self-appointed revolutionary leadership - splinter elements of the established elite, the tribes and the army - will be the face of a new regime, or whether they will be overtaken by younger, more radical activists, remains to be seen.

Shower me with hypocrisy
None of this anyway has placated the hysterical Western narrative, according to which there are only two options for Libya; to become a failed state or the next al-Qaeda haven. How ironic. Up to 2008, Libya was dismissed by Washington as a rogue state and an unofficial member of the "axis of evil" that originally included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

As former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark confirmed years ago, Libya was on the Pentagon/neo-conservative official list to be taken out after Iraq, along with Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and the holy grail, Iran. But as soon as wily Gaddafi became an official partner in the "war on terror", Libya was instantly upgraded by the George W Bush administration to civilized status.

As for the UN Security Council unanimously deciding to refer the Gaddafi regime to the International Criminal Court (ICC), it's useful to remember that the ICC was created in mid-1998 by 148 countries meeting in Rome. The final vote was 120 to seven. The seven that voted against the ICC were China, Iraq, Israel, Qatar and Yemen, plus Libya and ... the United States. Incidentally, Israel killed more Palestinian civilians in two weeks around new year 2008 than Gaddafi these past two weeks.

This tsunami of hypocrisy inevitably raises the question; what does the West know about the Arab world anyway? Recently the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) praised a certain northern African country for its "ambitious reform agenda" and its "strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector". The country was Libya. The IMF had only forgotten to talk to the main actors: the Libyan people.

And what to make of Anthony Giddens - the guru behind Blair's "Third Way" - who in March 2007 penned an article to The Guardian saying "Libya is not especially repressive" and "Gaddafi seems genuinely popular"? Giddens bet that Libya "in two or three decades' time would be a Norway of North Africa: prosperous, egalitarian and forward-looking". Tripoli may well be on its way to Oslo - but without the Gaddafi clan.

The US, Britain and France are so awkwardly maneuvering for best post-Gaddafi positioning it's almost comical to watch. Beijing, even against its will, waited until extra time to condemn Gaddafi at the UN, but made sure it was following the lead of African and Asian countries (smart move, as in "we listen to the voices of the South"). Beijing is extremely worried that its complex economic relationship with oil source Libya does not unravel (amid all the hoopla about fleeing expats, China quietly evacuated no less than 30,000 Chinese workers in the oil and construction business).

Once again; it's the oil, stupid. A crucial strategic factor for Washington is that post-Gaddafi Libya may represent a bonanza for US Big Oil - which for the moment has been kept away from Libya. Under this perspective, Libya may be considered as yet one more battleground between the US and China. But while China goes for energy and business deals in Africa, the US bets on its forces in AFRICOM as well as NATO advancing "military cooperation" with the African Union.

The anti-Gaddafi movement must remain on maximum alert. It's fair to argue the absolute majority of Libyans are using all their resourcefulness and are wiling to undergo any sacrifice to build a united, transparent and democratic country. And they will do it on their own. They may accept humanitarian help. As for war porn, throw it in the dustbin of history.

[Adios]

It's always been about the oil. Sadly, if we had spent those trillions of dollars developing different energy sources oil could possibly be reduced to a historical footnote by now.

So I suppose control of oil is just simply control, and we all know that is more important than anything.

Right?

[LMNO]

There does seem to be a different attitude on this one, yeah?  On the other hand, Gadaffi is the only one openly gunning down protesters.  So there is that...





As a complete aside, I think Godwin's law should temporarily include any references to Charlie Sheen.

[Cain]

There does seem to be a different attitude on this one, yeah?  On the other hand, Gadaffi is the only one openly gunning down protesters.  So there is that...

Not so.  In Bahrain protestors were gunned down in front of BBC and Al Jazeera journalists.  They broadcast the aftermath of such attacks on the evening news over here, with the rushing ambulances and people bleeding from wounds decrying the government brutality.  While the scale of violence there is likely smaller, so is the country overall.  Yemen has also reportedly used brutal violence, though I don't have much details on that.

But Bahrain does house the Fifth Fleet, who would be the principle strike force against Iran, and have the largest growing financial sector in the world, so...