By Nafissa Assed
As the 17th February commemorates the memory of the fallen victims of the Abu Salim prison massacre, when over 1200 prisoners were brutally executed, the 7th April is also known as one of those days that witnessed some of the worst abuses of human rights in Libyan history. On 7th April 1976, Qaddafi ordered the persecution and public execution of Libyan university students who were suspected of opposing the regime. The same month of the same year also commemorates Qaddafi’s physical liquidation campaign against Libyan dissidents inside and outside Libya.
Today I called a family member in Libya and she told me that the living conditions and the level of terror in Tripoli are indescribable. People go to the gas stations, wait for hours, and when their turn comes, they may be unlucky and find none left. There is no money in banks anymore. Every time she goes to the bank, they keep telling her the same thing: that there is no money. People barely go out, and what’s worse is that there are many elderly and babies who must receive weekly treatment in clinics. The critical living conditions of Tripoli are disrupting its economic life gravely, as Malta stopped a fuel ship on its way to west Libya, preventing it from making its delivery in accordance with the UN blockade.
However, Qaddafi’s forces keep giving large sums of money to people who join his heinous forces or go to Bab al-Aziziya and salute Qaddafi outside his fortified compound. In fact, the revolutionaries found some of Qaddafi’s mercenaries in possession of thousands of dollars as a payment to kill Libyans with no mercy. Also, the brigade of Khamis, Qaddafi’s most sadistic son, feeds non-Libyan mercenaries the flesh of dogs, and hits those who refrain from eating it. This video shows how the mercenaries are treated and ordered to shed the blood of the defenseless Libyan civilians.
With the continuous and intense shelling in Misrata by Qaddafi’s thugs, I learned today that one of my cousins who lives in Misrata didn’t make it out of city. Her family hasn’t heard from her since the beginning of March, as the city is completely blocked and isolated with no electricity, no water, and all communications cut off. The saddest part is that my cousin was pregnant in her ninth month and due to deliver her baby by the beginning of March. Her father did his utmost to reach and help her leave Misrata but all his attempts failed. Her father said, “I already consider her a martyr, and if I learned she is alive then that would be a miracle.” She is 28 years old. The wounded Libyans who flee from Misrata keep talking about the ineffable violence and shelling and that there is no corner safe in Misrata to hide from Qaddafi’s brutal forces.
With all this, NATO is not helping the revolutionaries to gain strength on the ground, and coalition airstrikes have destroyed only 30% of Gaddafi’s air defenses. NATO is supposed to destroy defensive Qadaffi positions, infantry, artillery and armor. With soldiers and tanks destroyed from the air the revolutionaries could easily use their own tanks and soldiers to take the vacant terrain and move forward. I wonder if the UN resolution said anything about helping revolutionaries to unshackle cities like Misrata, Zawiya and Zentan from Qaddafi’s vicious forces. The NATO move seems to be fully against the UN resolution by doing more accidental killing against the opposition side but almost nothing to protect the defenseless civilians in Misrata. NATO seems to be incapable in carrying out precise airstrikes. Whatever the reason is, the lying and hypocrisy surrounding this military action is disgusting.
But to look on the bright side, one of the unmentioned gains of the NFZ is saving Libya from watching Qaddafi or Saif’s long speeches about the opposition being part of al-Qaeda – I’m starting to wonder whether or not al-Qaeda is reveiving royalties every time a dictator uses their name in a speech. Neither do we have to hear speeches about hallucinatory pills. In fact, I believe the biggest relief pill that the entire planet can enjoy now is hearing the confirmed news that Gaddafi is dead.
Back to Tripoli. Last Friday, April 1st, security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up anti-regime demonstrations after Friday prayers in Tajura, located in the city’s outskirts. Qaddafi’s officials ordered the international press not to leave the hotel on Friday because it would be too dangerous for them to go out, or better say too shocking for them to witness how Qaddafi’s forces treat bare-handed protestors.
Recent updates confirm that Omar Fathi bin Shatwan, Qaddafi’s former energy minister, has fled to Malta, where he says members of the inner circle want to defect but are afraid for their family’s lives. He also announced that Qaddafi is running out of cash and oil to finance his war against his own people.
The battle is getting harder and more unfair as Libyan revolutionaries survive on dried milk, tuna and dates, while Qaddafi survives on bunkers, mercenaries, slaves and using rape as a war tool. But I know who will survive in the end.
P U L S E 
Amazing stuff.
Looks like Nafissa Assed’s been coached by Hill & Knowlton – or maybe Nayira al-Sabah herself.
Hey, when those zio-imperialist israeloamericans find a scam that works, they stick with it.
Leaving aside the historical facts, whose various overtones are an issue for scholars to examine, and coming to the present facts, IS ALL THIS CREDIBLE? The feverish story, bordering on war-porn descriptions, makes me sceptic, especially as it serves the interests of imperialist aggression and covers the greed of the ragtag quislings on the ground, who expect their “revolution” to be made by foreign powers, bound to establish a protectorate selling off Libyan riches.
How on earth can the success of the Libyan patriotic forces be explained on the basis of mercenary action and sheer terror? The only explanation to find is that the Libyans have turned against the bizarre Transitional Council (Gaddafi renegades, CIA assets, al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists…) and are defending their land and their oil.
Nowadays the majority of the tribes who began supporting the protest have abandoned the revolution, and the “rebels” lack even of soldiers, as most of their men are conscripts who run away as they see the enemy, which is why they are shamefully calling for more and more foreign intervention, even on the ground. How can you take seriously “revolutionaries” who use Western money and weapons and need an impressive arsenal of planes, warships, missiles and depleted uranium bombs to keep fighting along with SAS and CIA instructors, and soon special forces and dodgy contractors?
Where is the people? Where is the revolution? Whose war is this?
Please read an informed African opinion, by someone who fought his own rebellion, and who was also at odds with Gaddafi:
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/ugandas-president-on-the-gadhafi-he-knows/?hpt=Sbin
That’s right, Wikispooks and Enrique, Western leftists with their heads up their arses know much better than Libyans themselves. Your insults to the Libyan people are pathetic. I look forward to the day when your friends and family are confronted by a tank. I will then laugh when you run away.
“That’s right, Wikispooks and Enrique, Western leftists with their heads up their arses know much better than Libyans themselves. Your insults to the Libyan people are pathetic. I look forward to the day when your friends and family are confronted by a tank. I will then laugh when you run away.”
Do you really think such a childish, and obviously right-wing anti-left response helps your credibility?
BTW, how is judith miller doing these days?
Ha, ha, pathetic? And you are blind. I’m afraid your information is based on the corporate media spin, and interested accounts. All we are told about Libya has been “rebel” propaganda as told to one-sided reporters of al-Jazeera (loudspeaker of the Qatari autocracy) and the Western media. And of course such feverish stories as this one.
Get it over: all lies or almost. There has been no massacre in Libya, whereas there have been towns taken and lost by government forces, so we should know names and details of those “6000” and others…
What we have learnt even from our media is that the “rebels” have organized pogroms against Africans and mistreated people whose allegiance they find dubious. At the beginning, if you look at a reply I sent here in February, I was sympathetic to the Libyan protesters. No longer, those who have remained at the helm of the fight have sold out to the empire. You cannot possibly expect any revolution or liberation whatsoever from the US, NATO, Sarkozy; that is an aberration of the mind.
The bosses of the rebellion are well-known former Gaddafi’s henchmen, corrupt ministers and generals, who were plotting with France and others an uprising even before the Arab Spring started, CIA assets sent in from the US to take over relevant posts in the TNC, and notorious al-Qaeda Islamists (small wonder, as we know who founded al-Qaeda!).
That is a bunch of quislings whether you like it or not. And the brave young men sent to the front aren’t fighting because they have been conscripted and it isn’t their war. That they run away when they face a tank? Of course! Just compare to the determination of the patriotic forces who even under massive and criminal bombings continue the fighting! Don’t look for odd explanations. They are defending their land against the invaders, which is why they are ready to die and not to run away.
Open your eyes wide: See how the AU Peace mission has got the approval by the government to stop the bloodshed, whereas the rebels continue demanding war, even if they are losing it on the ground, just because they hope the empire will send troops in and present them power … and Gaddafi’s head on a silver plate.
It is difficult to ignore who is promoting here the bloodshed, who is inciting war since the riots started, and who is telling lies to gain international support. But as the fighting continues, the world is beginning to understand the treacherous plot we were sold. Thanks to researching through internet and a wide variety of sources I could understand and change my opinion since February. Likewise most of Libyans and tribes who were sympathetic to the protests are now waging war against the quislings of the empire. Just look at the Warfallah, the largest tribe (1 million strong), they proclaimed their support to the protest the second day, and now they are fighting the rebels. And what about the southern tribes, who come out from the desert to outflank the rebels? Or what the rebels call “snipers” in civillian clothes shooting at them in Ajdabiya? In fact actual civilians armed with light weapons defending their homes. There is a lot to learn when we’ll be allowed to learn the truth.
Libya Rebels had NATO Weapons from Day 1
Nickolay Starikov, April 10, 2011
“Libyan rebels from the Feb. 17 armed coup attempt to overthrow the Libyan government had brand new weapons since the first day of the uprising. These weapons were of non-Libyan origin and had already been secretly imported into Libya in advance of Feb. 17. There are millions of dollars worth of technically advanced light and heavy weaponry.
It appears that there were secret foreign benefactors giving state-of-the-art weapons to Benghazi terror gangs in the coup attempt, and the video even shows Western trainers showing them how to use the weapons against the Libyan Army. The Benghazi terrorist Libyan rebels from the Feb. 17 uprising appear to be paid mercenaries and Libyan expatriates, mixed in with naive students and Al Qaeda veteran foreign fighters, who each hope that they will come out on top.
Evidence indicates that the rebels are ex-patriate Libyans on CIA and MI6 payrolls who have been sent back and have infiltrated Libya as part of the coup attempt against the Libyan government of Col. Muammar Al Gaddafi.”
(It’s about a 9 min. video)
[http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/04/libya-rebels-had-nato-weapons-day-1]
Debunking the zionist propaganda:
Libya: Media Propaganda and “Humanitarian Imperialism”
by Julie Lévesque, April 10, 2011
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24207]
Enrique Ferro,
I don’t have access to as much information as you do, but what I do have leads me to agree with your assessment. But I don’t find Musaveni or F Zakaria any more credible than I do Ms Robin Y-K, I’m sorry to say.
(Ed: that would be Mr. Robin Y-K)
Thank you, Hayate, for your valuable videos, which I will share with my lists asap.
Thank you also, teafoe2. As a matter of fact I have worked for some years on a newsreel which I send free to my lists twice a week. I gather essays, op-eds, and news especially on the ME from a large variety of media and blogs, and so I get very interesting information and alternative views.
If you want I can subscribe you to a reception list.
Now I know Musaveni is not the most reliable of sources, but I suggested his article because he was also critical with Gaddafi, and I wanted to provide a more detached author. He also had the advantage of being a witness, and of stating an African point of view.
Only from my latest newsreel you can try the following links. Please consider that they are from these past days, I have collected a lot of other items since the beginning of this senseless, incited war, and from many reliable and prestigious authors, journalists, observers, and academics.
So just from the last few days:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-were-not-being-told-the-truth-on-libya-2264785.html
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1042/re4.htm
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/04/06/48559759.html
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1042/re6.htm
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/04/05/french-fraud-behind-libya-war-drive/
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/liby-a06.shtml
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24151
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/libyan-rebels-training-funded-arab
http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2011/04/libya-and-cia-role-in-africa.html
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/from-ivory-coast-to-libya-and-beyond-africa-threatened-with-western-military-subjugation/
http://bermudaradical.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/africans-united-in-defense-of-libya-u-s-led-white-imperialism-out-of-africa/
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Responding-to-the-Office-o-by-Dennis-Kucinich-110408-611.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD09Ak01.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/divided-and-disorganised-libyan-rebel-military-turn-on-nato-allies-2264334.html
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/1074.html
http://www.zcommunications.org/gilbert-achcars-defense-of-humanitarian-intervention-by-edward-s-herman
the piece was written by Nafissa Assed, who is, unlike me, a Libyan.
As to all the other interesting comments, I’m afraid I don’t have time.
Thank you Mr Y-K, I stand corrected:)
BIG thanks to YOU, Enrique, for all the links as well as for the enlightening commentary. The only thing I DON’T see is how to sub to your list. Do you also have a blog or homepage? Seems like one would be useful…?
And last but not least, thank you again, hayate, for many focused and balanced comments on this and other postings.
I don’t have a blog, but a googlegroup page. But I’m not sure if people may sub directly, so better provide me with your e-mail so that I may send you the subscription.
My address:
ferro.enrique@gmail.com
Thanks!
BTW, I’ve found myself relying on Antiwar.com for timely up to the hour reporting of developments on the Libya front. So I was sorely disappointed to see that they have chosen to ignore the antiwar protests Sat & Sun
in NYC & SF called by UNAC and supported by some eighty groups.
I myself have serious reservations about some of the groups involved, as I do about many of the trends favored by the Antiwar.com editors and writers– but if Antiwar and its “antiwar republican” following organized a major demonstration against Obama’s war & occupation policies, I’d certainly support and participate as far as possible.
There has been a corporate media blackout of the protests against this ziofascist war against the Libyan people. Another clue that this war is ziofascist sponsored and run. The news at antiwar.com is mostly corporate msm and they didn’t cover the protests – for obvious reasons, given their ownership by zionist fascists. Why antiwar.com didn’t cover the protest is strange, given their supposed role as a website, but antiwar.com was solidly behind the mossad/cia green “color rev” against Iran, and still propagandise those war crimes. The commentaries at antiwar.com look to be against the outside intervention in Libya, so I don’t know what is motivating them to avoid covering the nyc protest.
Here is a description of the protest:
NYC demonstration against U.S. aggression revitalizes anti-war movement
[http://www.iacenter.org/actions/antiwardemo-rept041011]
At 10000 strong and 20 blocks long, that is no small protest. The link also provides many other links describing the event, with many videos of it.
Cheers and thanks, Enrique Ferro & teafoe2
I feel the same about what you two are writing and the info you’ve provided.
Thanks, Hayate. I must say that I was worrying a lot for a while as I received recent Pulse messages, with so much praise to the Libyan rebels, and ignoring so much the brutal imperialist aggression. Otherwise a left-wing site which I always had in high esteem, I didn’t actually know what to think!
When I decided to reply today to a message of that quality, I felt apprehensive and I expected a flurry of insults and all that, and oh, surprise! I wasn’t alone in reacting!
It has been a happy coincidence, I see that the left is still healthy and doesn’t fall into the “humanitarian” trap by condoning imperial expansion and the establishment of stooge regimes.
Cheers, Enrique
It’s interesting that this assed has no history on the web prior to her role as this blogger. The grandfather she spoke of, Muhammad Osman Said, is also virtually without a history on the web. A search of his name only brings up birth/death dates and that he was PM of Libya from 1960-63. No personal or political history, nothing on his role in the guv, or what he did as PM. Strange. A look at Libyan history during the time he was PM brought up the fact that Libya was extremely corrupt then, and the political leadership was based upon patronship and corruption.
As for the father she claimed that was killed by qaddafi’s guv, who was he? Why was he killed, if that is true?
I wonder if assed’s lack of a “paper trail”, personal and family, was a factor in assigning her this current role. That anonymity has been a factor in a lot of other people who later proved to be zionist assets.
I’m blocking you, Hayate, as I find your comments on Nafissa, who I have known personally for years, to be quite disgusting. Nafissa has recently escaped from the terror of Tripoli and still has family memebers in danger. She is a woman of integrity, honesty and intelligence. You, on the other hand, are a hysteric. Go and masturbate at one of your conspiracy sites. This ‘ziofascist’ site is obviously not for you.
Thus King Idreess’s PM. Do you still want any further description?
Was he a member of the Sanussi Brotherhood, like most of official posts during the Monarchy?
As a matter of fact we shouldn’t forget that the Sanussis, after a glorious struggle against the Italian colonialism (Omar al-Mukhtad was a Zanussi shaik), entered in an alliance with the Brits, and got the Libyan throne, and as a proof of their new loyalty, granted them and the Americans military bases.
By the time of his premiership petroleum had already been discovered, and all political parties, unions, and political or social activity had been banned. The regime had become extremely corrupt, and its oil revenues were conveniently extroverted, whereas the Sanussi leaders lived in luxury, in a country which continued being extremely poor.
Therefore the Monarchy became extremely discredited and hated, untill finally a bloodless coup d’etat finished with it, and brough Gaddafi to power.
Now the rebels have taken back King Idreess’s flag and are bound to restore old dependence, which already showed up what it was worth.
Actually, Robin, I may not agree with Hayat’s rhetoric, and my line of analysis is different, and I may certainly disagree on her views on the “green movement” in Iran, which deserves to be discussed in another string, but your measure to block her I find extreme.
I acknowledge in the heat of a discussion sometimes people may go beyond their usual good humour. But blocking is no good omen for the democracy we are supposed to stand for.
You should not forget that the great scandal here began, not when the demonstrators started to protest, but when they began to demand imperial cover. That is a capital sin in the manual of any revolutionary, as it means to betray a revolution and selling the country to colonial powers.
Whether you like it or not, Gaddafi has become the patriotic leader, and the rebel command just stooges, some of them even “parachuted” directly from the US. And if they lose their ground is because the people supports them no longer.
Now on behalf of democratic standards you should not block people, or at least you could warn. Otherwise you risk having a site of yes-men.
Yassin-Kassab,
I do think Nafissa Assed is big enough to defend herself. After all, she survived Gadafi’s terror.
I do have many questions, and I am glad we have a Libyan on this site. Thanks PULSE.
I hope Nafissa Assed will join us.
Thanks, teafoe2. As a matter of fact this string started because some of us questioned the credibility of Ms Assed. She went out to tell a very feverish story, which sounded like a Gothic story rather than actual facts. So small wonder somebody went into finding out, and apparently found nothing.
I haven’t been involved too often in Pulse forum, but you can find something before, and many even on this list are aware of my activity for years denouncing imperialism and Zionism. I don’t write articles, but comments, and above all I forward a lot of interesting items which are not at all neutral, so it is not difficult to signal my commitment with leftist and secular values, etc.
So what was the commitment of Ms Assed? Perhaps she was working underground and therefore she wasn’t as free as others to get involved in the net. I respect that, because when I lived under conditions of dictatorship we weren’t keen on going public, and I know what that means…
So I’ll be very happy to accept her deep commitment against Gaddafi’s regime. I would have been sympathetic with her even until as recently of a couple of weeks. However now that the rebels have sold out their “revolution” if any to the empire, I’ve been bound to revise the ideas I had on Libya, and I am really very angry with them. But as I have studied their former incarnations, I really find the leadership at least us despicable, a bunch of renegades and quislings.
As for Ms Assed, all the information I have gathered so far is that her grand-father was a PM of King Idrees. What does that mean? Well that her family belonged to the monarchist elite. So how objective can her account be? I still find an issue of credibility with her information, even more so. It is as if the grand-child of a prominent politician of the shah hated the IRI now…
Oh, btw, unlike hayate, I have no sympathy for the Iranian theocracy, but I have no sympathy either for the monarchists. Fortunately there are leftists and even reformist movements in Iran I can stand by (as long as they remain patriotic!), but certainly not the Monarchists!
Now in Libya there is no leftist rebel as far as I know. There are Monarchists, Gaddafi renegades, CIA assets, and Al-Qaeda Islamists… And on top of that in the payroll of the imperialist aggressors (of many other places in the world too). And do you want me to feel sympathetic with them?!? NO WAY! I don’t like Gaddafi, but at least he is the man defending the Libyan national sovereignty, and the Libyan national property. And therefore I don’t have the choice!