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

sure they may be carrying signs demanding it and proclaiming forcefully their desire for it but if only you understood their mentality youd see it has nothing to do w/democracy and more to do w/things no one is even thinking abt like isreal which everyone is thinking abt and indeed even talking abt

Exactly.

u sure she meant israel? maybe she thinks it's about (i dunno) food prices or something reasonable?

oil probably

Also oil. But I'm sure about the Israel part. Also she said, "I have my BIASES, of course, but I really feel sorry for those people."

chart chart yalll http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/gadhafis-influence-on-africa/article1915484/?from=1915485

is Qaddafi the only OG 70s pan-African nationalist guy still in power?

mubarak oh wait

oh right Mugabe

xp

Mugabe didn't get power till '80, though, I think

that map is idiotic.

Tunisia is not part of Libya.

Mugabe didn't get power till '80, though, I think

right but he still came up in the late 60s/70s, he's part of that generation

Tunisia is not part of Libya.

^^^yeah I was wondering about that lol

some of those boxed statements are a little vague... and the $ amounts look kinda peanuts but in context of US defense spending it's hard to tell what's substantial

i'm sure for an african nation is alot more. but seriously, i have higher expectations than this from the globe.

btw was it ever proven (Qaddafi's boasts notwithstanding) that Libya was responsible for that bomb in the Berlin nightclub -- the attack that the Reagan admnistration used as a pretext to bomb him?

I've read a couple of things alleging that Syria was responsible.

There was a good piece in the Evening Standard (honest) yesterday about the unfortunate habit of turning brutal dictators into comic figures - concentrating on the kitsch decor and absurd rhetoric rather than the crimes. I am certainly not immune to this.

i think about this a lot actually. i basically think there are two kinds of jokes. there are distant uninformed vague "lol isn't kim jong-il crazy" jokes and then there are "i grew up in 1930s russia and/or have spent years studying it and can make very specific and very grim jokes about stalinism". the second class of joke is a light in darkness, i think. also they're much funnier, which is important.

jokes have a funny (heh) double function that way, partly they allow you to call it like it is and say, this guy is hopelessly ridiculous, must be so insane and horrible to live under him. on the other hand they kind of immunize you from looking clearly at acts themselves done by anyone else: surely we aren't doing anything horrible, it's not like we're that guy

Some of the ridicule is a liberal reflex. Because grew up with the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations pleading for the support of a tinpot tyrant, we point at Ahmadinejad's JcPenny trousers and Kim Jong-Il's sunglasses as a way to deflate the seriousness.

*because WE grew up

Danny DeVito has weighed in. This must be the endgame.

http://t.co/v7pXa4Z

pretty bad when divito is calling you sick.

So imagining him in Louie mode saying that.

Also apparently Algeria has just lifted its 19-year state of emergency? No idea what that actually entails on the ground.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 22 February 2011 17:36 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they turn the sirens off

― goole, Tuesday, 22 February 2011 17:36 (5 hours ago) Bookmark

^^^ goole killin it itt

This old photo of Qaddafi is surely straight out of Thunderbirds:

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp2-22-11r.jpg

lol Africa map fixed!

gadaffi's military-chic hugh-hefner arab-messiah thing is i think we all have to admit a pretty good look.

but FASHION ISN'T EVERYTHING.

ha, been thinking the same thing but afraid to say it.

i think gaddafis look is "late 70s bob dylan as late 80s michael jackson"

aka "rich, curly-haired & paranoid"

so wait, gaddafi sleeps on the second floor of a tent?

It's a really nice tent.

BBC: The UK's recent ban on arms exports to Libya shows welcome restraint but comes too late, says Pieter Wezeman from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He told the BBC's Focus on Africa: "Politicians up to the levels of presidents and prime ministers have visited Libya and tried to market military equipment to Gaddafi in the knowledge that this man is a dictator, and in the knowledge that there was a risk he might use those weapons against his own population. So it's good that they have restraint now, but it does seem a bit late."

so is Qaddafi dead yet lemme know

we can kill time posting all the alternate spellings of his name

Gadafdaf

tragedy gaddafi

^i wanted to use this as a display name but figured it'd be in poor taste

Falafgadaf

i think gaddafis look is "late 70s bob dylan as late 80s michael jackson"

omg this is perfect.

i would've settled for 00's mickey rourke but the bob dylan/michael jackson comparison works as well (if not better).

lol i told somebody today 'mickey rourke IS michael jackson IN libya 2011'

Good luck Eboue, Drogba, and brothers Touré:

Unidentified gunmen in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Abidjan, killed at least 10 policemen yesterday and seized one military vehicle, according to l’Intelligent d’Abidjan.

Gunfire was heard in the neighborhood of Abobo throughout the night, the Abidjan-based newspaper reported today.

The suburb is a stronghold of President-elect Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of disputed Nov. 28 elections. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo has refused to resign, alleging voter fraud.

yup, gotta love all the people wringing their hands saying "are we sure they're READY for democracy?" cos they all look plenty ready to me.

Funny that a lot of the same people were conviced the Iraqis were ready for democracy come what may and a that lot of other people, who were saying "you can't impose democracy in Iraq, they're not ready for it", think the Egyptians et al are

a that lot of other people, who were saying "you can't impose democracy in Iraq, they're not ready for it"

i don't recall anyone saying this, Tom. i do recall several million people believing that democracy can't be imposed down the barrel of a gun.

interesting question on today programme of whether the_west shd help libyans now by imposing a no-fly zone

Confused by Tariq Ali's piece in the Guardian today.

The absurd, if much vaunted, neocon notion that Arabs or Muslims were hostile to democracy has disappeared like parchment in fire.

Didn't neocons think the opposite? Depends what you mean by neocons, I guess, but some were, if anything, excessively optimistic about democracy in the Arab world while some of the Iraq war's opponents were the pessimists, not just about Iraq (where they were right) but about the whole region. For example:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/the-fantasy-of-democracy-in-an-arab-state-569805.html

I found that link via David Aaronovitch on Twitter. Unlike him, I opposed the Iraq war and distrusted the rhetoric around it, but I think he's right to point out the lack of coherence coming from the likes of Fisk and Ali here. (Of course there's equal and opposite incoherence from the likes of John Bolton on the right)

^ that's what I meant