Mercenaries at Work
February 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Mercenaries in yellow helmets terrorise a street in Benghazi before the city’s liberation.
Cockroach Rule
February 23rd, 2011 § 2 Comments
Mussolini and his mistress. April 1945
Our informant in Tripoli, last I heard, was at home, terrified, trying her best to remain calm amid the sound of heavy gunfire.
Tripoli is very hotly contested. Reports suggest eastern Libya, meanwhile, has become an anarchist’s paradise. Benghazi, Tobruk, al-Bayda and smaller towns and villages are in the hands of the people and revolutionary soldiers. Committees have been formed for neighbourhood protection, rubbish collection and traffic direction. The mood is peaceful, triumphant and fearless. Two war planes have been landed in Benghazi by pilots who refuse to bomb the people. Another crashed outside the city after its pilots parachuted out. Today the city of Misurata, in the west, has also been liberated.
Qaddafi’s regime has already collapsed. The army in Misurata, and in the Jebel al-Akhdar region, has joined the people. A statement by high-ranking officers asks all military personnel to head to Tripoli to remove Qaddafi. The Interior Minister and the Justice Minister have resigned, as have many diplomats. All prominent Libyan tribal and religious leaders have backed the revolution. At least a quarter of the country’s oil output has halted; a tribal leader in the east threatened to stop supplies to Europe if Qaddafi continued to kill – and indeed the pipeline to Italy is now dry.
Gaddafi’s Latest Coup
February 23rd, 2011 § 1 Comment
(Photo: Keystone/Zuma)
May 3, 1983: Former Chief of Staff of the IDF Rafael Eitan refers to Palestinians as drugged cockroaches scurrying in a bottle.
February 22, 2011: Muammar Gaddafi refers to his own people as drugged cockroaches that need to be cleansed.
This is an Arab 1848
February 23rd, 2011 § 1 Comment
by Tariq Ali
Revolutionary murals on the walls of newly established toilet facilities for protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
The refusal of the people to kiss or ignore the rod that has chastised them for so many decades has opened a new chapter in the history of the Arab nation. The absurd, if much vaunted, neocon notion that Arabs or Muslims were hostile to democracy has disappeared like parchment in fire.
Those who promoted such ideas appear to the most unhappy: Israel and its lobbyists in Euro-America; the arms industry, hurriedly trying to sell as much while it can (the British prime minister acting as a merchant of death at the Abu Dhabi arms fair); and the beleaguered rulers of Saudi Arabia, wondering whether the disease will spread to their tyrannical kingdom. Until now they have provided refuge to many a despot, but when the time comes where will the royal family seek refuge? They must be aware that their patrons will dump them without ceremony and claim they always favoured democracy.
If there is a comparison to be made with Europe it is 1848, when the revolutionary upheavals left only Britain and Spain untouched – even though Queen Victoria, thinking of the Chartists, feared otherwise. Writing to her besieged nephew on the Belgian throne, she expressing sympathy but wondered whether “we will all be slain in our beds”. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown or bejewelled headgear, and has billions stored in foreign banks.
Voices
February 22nd, 2011 § 1 Comment
by Wislawa Szymborska
You scarcely move your foot when out of nowhere spring
the Aborigines, O Marcus Aemilius.
Your heel’s mired in the very midst of Rutulians.
In Sabines, and Latins you’re sinking up to your knees.
You’re up to your waist, your neck, your nostrils
in Aequians and Volscians, O Lucius Fabius.
These small peoples are thick as flies, to the point of irritation,
satiation and nausea, O Quintus Decius.
One town, another, the hundred seventieth.
The stubbornness of Fidenates. The ill-will of the Faliscans.
The blindness of Ecetrans. The vacillation of the
Antemnates.
The studied animosity of the Lavicanians, the Pelignians.
That’s what drives us benevolent men to harshness
beyond each new hill, o Gaius Cloelius.
If only they weren’t in our way, but they are,
the Auruncians, the Marsians, O Spurius Manlius.
The Tarquinians from here and there, the Etruscans from
everywhere.
The Volsinians besides. The Veientins to boot.
Beyond all reason the Aulercians. Ditto the Sapinians
beyond all human patience, O Sextus Oppius.
Small peoples have small understanding.
Stupidity surrounds us in an ever-widening circle.
Objectionable customs. Benighted laws.
Ineffectual gods, O Titus Vilius.
Mounds of Hernicians. Swarms of Marrucianians.
An insect-like multitude of Vestians, of Samnites.
The farther you go the more there are, O Servius Follius.
Deplorable are small peoples.
Their irresponsibility bears close watching
beyond each new river, O Aulus Junius.
I feel threatened by every new horizon.
That’s how I see the problem, O Hostius Melius.
To that I, Hostius Melius, reply to you,
O Appius Pappius: Forward. Somewhere out there the world
must have an end.
- Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1996. Poem courtesy of Andrew Bacevich.
Death and Destruction in Libya
February 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
UPDATE: The regime is collapsing. The minister of interior Gen. Abdulfatah Younis, whom Gaddafi praised in his speech, has just resigned and joined the revolution.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal reaches the Egyptian side of the border with Libya and begins to receive reports from those fleeing the country in revolt.
Civilians have rushed to the Al Jazeera team with memory sticks, telling him they contain images of “horrific scenes”: planes and helicopter gunships firing indiscriminately, and mercenaries breaking into homes and “slaughtering” people.
U.S. confused by lack of press freedom in Turkey
February 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Last week Turkey arrested four journalists suspected of links to the ultranationalist Ergenekon organization, which is accused of plotting to force a military coup against the ruling AK Party.
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone responded to the arrests by stressing the importance of freedom of the press:
Journalists are being detained on the one hand, while addresses about freedom of the speech are given on the other. We do not understand this.”
In the interest of adding to the ambassador’s confusion, I am submitting the following two recent news excerpts on the subject of press freedom. The first is from an article in The Guardian about the possible true identity of “Raymond Davis,” the American contractor who murdered between two and three people in Pakistan at the end of last month. The second is from the introduction to a Democracy Now! interview with American journalist Brandon Jourdan.
1. “A number of US media outlets learned about Davis’s CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration. A Colorado television station, 9NEWS, made a connection after speaking to Davis’s wife. She referred its inquiries to a number in Washington which turned out to be the CIA. The station removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government.”
How Many Martyrs?
February 21st, 2011 § 1 Comment
Our thoughts and prayers are with the heroes and heroines and martyrs of Libya, and with our brave correspondent in Tripoli, now under fire. Communication is on and off, mainly off. Here is her most recent report. Since she sent it the phone lines have been cut entirely and the city’s electricity is also disconnected.
I live in the Ben Ashour area of Tripoli. Minutes ago my neighborhood was under severe aircraft attacks. Non-Libyan mercenaries are attacking the people. 60 brave Libyans from the army were executed because they refused to kill their own brothers who were going on totally peaceful, unarmed demonstrations.
I hear the nonstop gun machines all round the area of Ben Ashour. We are witnessing the second massacre today and the death toll is reaching 250 in Tripoli and increasing! At this very moment I’m seeing at least 4 jets flying around the city of Ben Ashour. Armed mercenaries are located in different areas of Tripoli, mainly: Ben Ashour, Fashloum, Soug Ejoumaa, Gergaresh.
I heard that the jets are targeting unarmed civilians randomly (women, kids, elders). It’s 8:30 pm now and the number of martyrs is over 250 and I heard confirmed information that the attacks will not stop before 3 am, and I’m grieving and wondering how many martyrs Libya will witness by the morning of 22th February.
Libyan forces attack protesters
February 21st, 2011 § 1 Comment
Al Jazeera is reporting that live ammuntion is being used against protesters marching on the compound of Muammar Gaddafi. Other reports suggest that the protesters are also being strafed by the Libyan airforce. Meanwhile Ben Ghazi seems to have fallen to the protesters, who have also prevailed in at least two other cities. Some military personnel have escaped to Malta. (There is also a false rumour circulating that Gaddafi has fled to Venezuela.)
Following is a report about earlier clashes in Tripoli:
