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

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

tariq ali's article is full of weird shit, like libya being a key US ally, the US loving the muslim brotherhood... best ignored really

dorian otm

In fairness, the neocons attitude to democracy tended to be completely different depending on which nation they were talking about.

I think the characterisation is meant to be:

-The Arab world is not ready for self-built democracy
-We should teach the poor Arabs about democracy and then they will love us.

Whether anyone on the right ever actually held this position is debatable, of course.

I know it's not good for your blood pressure to read Melanie Philipps articles, but I read one the other day in which she harangued people who were against the Iraq war for their hypocrisy in supporting democracy in Egypt, and then went on to say that she was against democracy in Egypt although she was pro imposing it in Iraq.

Personally, I felt at the time that one of the many tragedies of the Iraq war was that it actually set back and discredited the idea of democracy promotion.

Basically she's in favour of democracy of Arabs who know their place in the world and the region and don't get uppity

"for" not "of"

mad mel was thinking about "things that no one is even THINKING about", ie all she cares about is israel.

xp I think a lot of ppl (myself included) agree w you re Iraq

fuck knows. stack up the counterfactuals: were saddam in power now, what would be happening in iraq?

Personally, I felt at the time that one of the many tragedies of the Iraq war was that it actually set back and discredited the idea of democracy promotion.

― Citizen Smith (Jamie T Smith), Wednesday, February 23, 2011 1:17 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not sure what this means exactly. it evidently hasn't discredited the idea of democracy in general. are you saying these revolutions would have happened *sooner* were it not for the iraq war? or what?

Domestically, within the US and Britain, the idea of spreading our "values" was discredited, no? Whatever moral authority "we" had internationally was damaged?

I've no idea whether these revolutions would have happened *sooner* were it not for the iraq war, though.

No reason why they should have

I've had a lot of conversations with people where the "they're not ready for democracy" argument was largely informed by opposition to Iraq war.

Botched "liberal intervention" not only made more such interventions difficult/impossible (a good thing in my book) but also made promoting freedom/human rights/democracy through non-military means more difficult.

Sorry, thinking this through as I type, so thanks for making me be more precise.

It may not have set back the cause of democracy or its desirability, but it set back the West's (questionable and hypocritcal in any case) efforts to promote it.

Since these uprisings seem to have happened without either Western encouragement or opposition, probably had no impact on them whatsoever.

But it was an attempt to answer the hypocrisy charge, which has some mileage.

Domestically, within the US and Britain, the idea of spreading our "values" was discredited, no? Whatever moral authority "we" had internationally was damaged?

our moral authority was damaged by the torture, definitely, but people didn't oppose the war because it was inevitable that we'd start torturing people. they opposed it partly because, as tracer says, you can't impose democracy with a gun, which is certainly something to debate.* i think for a fair few anti-war types it isn't something even to debate tho. anyway, that's why i raised the no-fly zone question.

*tbh a lot of anti-war people went further than this, hence my shock at zizek recently becoming the 'liberal democracy 4 egypt' guy -- he's explicitly not in favour of liberal democracy usually, so what gives?

Botched "liberal intervention" not only made more such interventions difficult/impossible (a good thing in my book) but also made promoting freedom/human rights/democracy through non-military means more difficult.

― Citizen Smith (Jamie T Smith), Wednesday, February 23, 2011 1:50 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

people weren't protesting botched intervention, just intervention. idk, i think we look incredibly shitty now for legitimizing gadaffi in the last decade, and the people who did it will tell you it helped the cause by turning him off WMD... complex shit man, complex shit.