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

The future Libyan air force may be still run by Gaddaffi. The above Arab countries have as little interest in doing a no-fly zone as well, the US.

Folks in favor of getting involved cite preventing another Rwanda or assert we can learn positive things from recent failures and successes in the Balkans and mideast and North Africa; opponents seem to simply ignore prior successes and just point to Afghanistan and Iraq or Somalia as a reason to stay out. Gates seems to argue that 2 wars at once is the US limit (and in the future none in the mideast or Africa).

Kind of crazy watching on live Al Jazeera webcam as rebels mill in the open at an intersection at R'as Lanuf. There's about 400 or so waiting to go back to the commuter war, 2 towed quad 12.7mm and 2 technicals with bed mounted 12.7s firing at a circling jet, and if anyone in Tripoli was watching on Al Jazeera he could target from Google Earth satellite imagery and knock 300+ rebels out of the fight.

Just really, really bad leadership on the rebel side, and bad judgement on the part of Al Jazeera.

Saif's Gaddafi's London mansion is now being occupied by squatters. Go squatters!

I was just coming over to post that. Go squatters!

It's probably the best place to squat in the whole of London, you know he won't notice or be able to do anything about it for months, possibly forever.

I bet it's a nice gaff too, no tower block in Feltham for the likes of him

A group calling themselves "Topple The Tyrants" occupied the £10m house in Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London on Wednesday morning.

They said they would remain in place until confident the property's assets would be returned to the Libyan people.

The UK government froze assets owned by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his family last week.

The group's spokesman, Montgomery Jones told the BBC: "We will stay here until we can be sure the property will be returned to its rightful owners."

He said: "The police came to look around, then went away. The house isn't occupied at the moment but there are things to sit on."

The group said the property was managed by the Gaddafi family through a holding company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

In a statement it added: "We didn't trust the British government to properly seize the Gaddafi regime's corrupt assets, so we took matters into our own hands.

"In the meantime we want to welcome refugees from the conflict in Libya and those fleeing tyranny and oppression across the world."

"We stand in solidarity with the Libyan people."

Waiting for an update from Miss LP; as a former squatter it always brings a smile to my face when industrious young'uns inconvenience a rich asshole dictator's son.

Friend on Facebook wants to know when Beyonce will perform.

It's more likely they just want to dick around in a mansion in Hampstead really, and fair enough, but I'm not sure I buy the political protest aspect and I certainly can't see how it would be in any way useful.

I mean, rich asshole dictator's son is being 'inconvenienced' is so many other ways right now that there's no way some house hundreds of miles away is on his radar at all.

Well, he did put it on the market and take it off again, just weeks ago.

amazing pics http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/03/libyas-escalating-conflict/100021/

#23

Wow!

Fisk says US wants to use Saudis to funnel weapons to Libyan rebels

Can't imagine that backfiring, oh no.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/libya0309/s_l29_RTR2JDR8.jpg

the rebel council in benghazi now has a website

http://ntclibya.org/english/

Envoys for Colonel Qaddafi fanned out across Europe and, according to some reports, Latin America and Africa, for purposes that remained obscure. Emissaries were reported to have visited Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Malta and Brussels in an effort to head off international action against Libya, and Greece confirmed that the Colonel himself had spoken with the Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou. France confirmed that President Nicola Sarkozy will meet with two envoys on Thursday. -NY Times

wkiw dude in #36.

You know what I was just thinking? Those Call of Duty commercials w/ Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel look REALLY craven right now. Not that I wasn't all wtf in the first place but... y'know...

Looks like the Instant Utopia breakfast mix for Egypt didn't work out.

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2287781/

not sure who you are accusing of naivety here

13 people are dead but on the bright side at least Morbs gets to crow about being right and some unidentified people being wrong.

yeah, I knew that was coming, congrats on the speed

I mean, we get it, you think anyone with any optimism about difficult and complex geopolitical issues is an idiot. I'm not sure there's any need to repeat x100.

Frankly, I don't see any other links above about the current strife, which sorta indicates this thread has moved on from Egypt.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9418922.stm

Noam Chomsky's take.

he seems very sure about what libyans remember or don't remember. 'the west is hated' and i guess always will in his view, because of what italy did in the 1920s. oh well.

countries like brazil and india and south africa, all with spotless human rights records, have the moral authority the_west lack.

ahahaha and turkey. yes.

we have blood on our hands 'in that region', whereas turkey...

Silly Chomsky

he nailed it at the end mind you

I was kind of waiting for a Chomsky-by-ultra-leftist-numbers response to the Libyan crisis.

having been lurking on this thread for a while, I found Chomsky's take to be a refreshing alternative to the various imperialist options being bandied about here.

im pretty sure chomsky's option has been discussed here

how does he distinguish a civil war from a revolution? what's the purpose of that bit of business?

It must be great to reach an age when you don't have to think about or question new situations anymore - you just cut and paste old opinions.

but then humanity basically never changes, eh

i want to live in a wooden house

then making friends would be easy.

Looks like a Guardian journalist and another one from a Brazilian newspaper have disappeared in Libya.

people who live in wooden houses shouldn't throw stones

cause they bounce off the walls and come back at u

shit is dangerous

it's a cold game to play

xxp it's been confirmed that they've been arrested, i think. brazilian officials have supposedly been told that their man will be released. but nothing yet on ghaith abdul-ahad.

what's french for 'recognize'?

lol that jeremy paxman dude was getting so frustrated, love it

SO WHAT SHOULD WE BE DOING?? NOTHING!?

lol this is great just for this british dude's incredulous reactions

"we know how you regard bush's and blair's records in the middle east. do you believe obama's no better?"
"well in many ways he's worse"
*spits out tea*