a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

sob

Mordy, maybe if you removed that Phillie pennant from your ass, humor would get through to you.

I also nearly posted above "be sure to paste some of my posts out of context, you fairy."

i asked that question because i was interested in morbs enters politics debate in good faith, not because the answer is important. lol me.

I'm glad all my posts are so important to Mordy, as long as he isn't jacking to them

yes, i know it was humor morbz. you got called out for being ignorant and went to a super ignorant line as some kind of thread judo. doesn't mean you weren't just talking out of your ass.

I thought Morbs was specifically talking about improvement in political climate rather than "human development" and yeah in that context South Africa and (East) Germany aren't as stupid an answer as you're making them out to be.

http://i.imgur.com/rcPGl.jpg

itp: morbs, his adversaries

Jesus:

A Libyan man, Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist, told the network by telephone that Libyan air force war planes had bombed "some locations in Tripoli".

He said he was talking from a suburb of Tripoli.

No independent verification of the report was immediately available.

An analyst for London-based consultancy Control Risks said the use of military aircraft on his own people indicated the end was approaching for Muammar Gaddafi.

"These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/feb/21/arab-and-middle-east-protests-middleeast

Gawd, Zimbabwe in that HDI graph - sad.

xposts

The speed of events in Libya are just dazzling.

Wow.

this is all i have to contribute

http://i56.tinypic.com/72gkeq.gif

amid all this i have to wonder if the CIA and other spy agencies are cranking up the machinery on rainy-day plans to fuck shit up / assassinate people / whatever that they've been waiting like a moment like this to pull the trigger on

Rumors have Qaddafi already out and heading to Venezuela.

Two air force colonels flew their fighter jets to Malta to defect. They refused to attack their own people.

Libya nblowing my mind esp in contrast to how it looked last night. But differences between this sitch and Egypt kind of scary. Nation of intense tribal loyalties etc... hope Libya does not become like pre-Taliban Afghanistan.

But damn these past weeks the main thing i'm feeling is just awe.

5:54pm: The London School of Economics - where Saif al-Islam Gaddafi attended university - says it is reviewing its links with Libya. The university says it has previously "delivered executive education programmes to Libyan officials, principally from the Economic Development Board". It has also received funding for scholarships in return for "advice given to the Libyan Investment Authority in London".

It is not expecting any further funds, the school says, but "intends to continue its work on democratisation in North Africa funded from other sources unrelated to the Libyan authorities".

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/17/live-blog-libya

It's been strange today seeing coverage where nobody really knows what's happening to a much greater degree than usual. If/when this kicks off in Saudi it'll be even more of a blankout I think.

libyan embassy in london has taken down its flag and replaced it with that of the protesters.

shit is moving so fast. i'm not sure i believe that gaddafi's gone anywhere, esp as military aircraft are even now bombing protesters in libya.

jesus christ

@sultanalqassemi on twitter if you're not already, btw

part of the confusion is b/c no western news agencies have actual reporters in tripoli except the BBC

can't find any mention of zimbabwe....where are you guys seeing this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/static/cricket/statistics/scorecards/2011/02/86109/html/scorecard.stm

But damn these past weeks the main thing i'm feeling is just awe.

― sewing wild OTTs (Jon Lewis), Monday, February 21, 2011 1:17 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

for real

i wonder if anyone in the western govts that helped prop up these regimes, politically & practically, feels any shame whatsoever? don't expect anyone to express any, of course.

not like they didn't know what they were getting into so probably not

Realpolitik innit.

#BBC
1933: More details on the call by Libya's diplomats at the United Nations for international intervention to end the crisis. The deputy ambassador, Ibrahim Omar Al Dabashi, told BBC World that Col Gaddafi's government was carrying out a genocide. "It is a real genocide whether it is in the eastern cities of Libya or whether what is going now in Tripoli," he said. "The information that we are receiving from the people in Tripoli is the regime is killing whoever goes out to the streets... He has his mercenaries everywhere in the streets and whenever any demonstrator appears they just kill them. At least they shoot them, whether they kill them or not, but they are shooting them."

Ghadafi prob would have been near to last on the neocon to-topple list, right?

xpost o_O

I bet the Scottish Justice Secretary is wishing this had all happened a couple of years ago.

http://twitter.com/meralhece/status/39784630559318016

Reports that Gaddafi has fled to Venezuela probably exaggerated, as he apparently has fear of flying over water #Libya
18 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

http://twitter.com/meralhece/status/39786478686961664

@thesuzannemoore Not much I suppose. He has fascinating phobias, eg. sleeping on upper floors, and lives in his tent in desert
12 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® in reply to thesuzannemoore

Must reiterate my pitch for a reality series that puts all these deposed dictators in an exile house together in Saudi Arabi.

So a popular cleric named Al Qardawi has issued a death fatwa against Qaddafi live on Al Jazeera?

Amazing that the Islamic extremists that so frequently alarm the, er, alarmists have really taken a sidelined and silent wait-and-see approach to all this multi-front action.

I think this sums things up nicely:

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/articles/article/19253/KellyEgypt_jpg_630x1200_upscale_q85.jpg

saif gaddafi is on twitter, and follows eddie izzard, who sent him a direct message asking him to stop the military killing the people

2011 o_0

whoa.

also:

http://f.cl.ly/items/0i063A1b2h1b2X3d3z0d/Screen%20shot%202011-02-21%20at%2022.13.59.jpg

i've probably read one too many john lecarre novels but all these libyan diplomats suddenly turning in their badges and throwing around the word "genocide" just seems fishy to me. it's not like this is the first time ghadafi's murdered hundreds of his own people - what makes them so sure this is the time to cash out? like i said upthread, i think the CIA has had gameplans for ousting ghadafi drawn up for years - maybe this is just the moment it's been waiting for? the US has wanted a less crazy source of Libyan oil for a long time. so in this scenario it's nice that US interests align so closely with Libyan protestors (whose background and identity appears to have been explained nowhere that i can find - though it took me a long time to figure out the whole labor background of the cairo protests, so) - so the diplomats and a few well-placed military dudes get a sniff of which way the wind is blowing, the US keeps absolutely schtum, and a new, less-crazy dude gets installed who is surprisingly amenable to US commercial and energy interests and who promises to only murder a few people a year and even then strictly on the DL, and a few reform bills get thrown to the Libyan people for whom nothing much really changes

fwiw i have heard this theory promulgated exactly nowhere, it is purely a product of my fever-brane

and may be based on nothing more than the rising bile i feel when watching libyan ambassador no. 1,523 condemn ghadafi in the strongest terms without explaining why they haven't spoken up at some point in their previous 40 years of "service"

i'm not shedding any tears for ghadafi

? why would you??

sorry, wasn't suggesting that you are, just that i'm not that cynical about this revolution (re: "and a new, less-crazy dude gets installed who is surprisingly amenable to US commercial and energy interests and who promises to only murder a few people a year and even then strictly on the DL, and a few reform bills get thrown to the Libyan people for whom nothing much really changes") and if, and i don't believe this is so, the only thing that happens is that ghadafi is thrown out and someone marginally better comes in, that's still better than the current status quo

I've still seen & heard nothing to indicate that anyone in the west had the remotest idea that all this was afoot, where it's going next, what the likely outcomes are, etc. I see no shadowy hands anywhere, just lots of confusion.

So there are some... photos going around, showing some of today's dead in Tripoli, and my god they are using some heavy ass shit against their own citizens. People just literally blown in half. Maybe it's just that I haven't looked at a lot of pictures of war dead in my life, but fucking hell.

not very recent photo but it makes me laugh

http://hillary.foreignpolicy.com/files/ClintonQaddafi86088884.jpg

the only thing that happens is that ghadafi is thrown out and someone marginally better comes in, that's still better than the current status quo

oh absolutely! i'm just kind of stunned at the total 180 being done by libya's diplomats (and a few of their military ppl). maybe i am being too cynical.

but i do very much believe there is all kinds of shadowy shit going down courtesy of spies of all stripes. they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they weren't somehow taking advantage of the confusion.

on a related note, this telegraph piece is pretty astute - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/8339469/The-revolution-may-be-televised-but-dont-expect-the-full-story.html

the US has wanted a less crazy source of Libyan oil for a long time. so in this scenario it's nice that US interests align so closely with Libyan protestors - so the diplomats and a few well-placed military dudes get a sniff of which way the wind is blowing, the US keeps absolutely schtum, and a new, less-crazy dude gets installed who is surprisingly amenable to US commercial and energy interests and who promises to only murder a few people a year and even then strictly on the DL, and a few reform bills get thrown to the Libyan people for whom nothing much really changes

I think you may be overestimating the CIA's capabilities and competence. Most evidence points to an organization that is barely able to keep up with events as they transpire, seldom actually foresees events, and has little capacity to dictate events. I mean maybe the CIA is executing all kinds of hugely successful plots that we don't know about, but I kind of doubt it. They seem to spend a lot of time nowadays explaining their failures and getting out of their own way. See news from Pakistan today.

xpost