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

looking like it.

Saudi moves in Bahrain are depressing as well.

yeah Japan disaster diverting attention totally favors the despots unfortunately

in libya, bahrain & wisconsin

no false equivalencies, obv nobody gettin carpet bombed in madison, i'm just sayin

Using tanks, heavy artillery and airstrikes, forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi began a sustained assault here on Tuesday, seeking to rout a ragtag army of insurgents and would-be revolutionaries holding the last defensive line before the rebel capital of Benghazi. New York Times

It's not looking good

MANAMA, Bahrain — Hours after the king of Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency, doctors at a central hospital on Tuesday said two protesters had been killed and some 200 wounded and injured in clashes with riot police in the suburban village of Sitra

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/middleeast/16bahrain.html?hp

Saudi Arabia has been watching uneasily as Bahrain’s Shiite majority has staged weeks of protests against a Sunni monarchy, fearing that if the protesters prevailed, Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter regional rival, could expand its influence and inspire unrest elsewhere.

I'm following a few Bahraini tweeters and let's just say it sounds pretty fucking awful on the ground there.

hey some good news

Good news in Egypt and Tunisia, but not so good news in Libya and Bahrain.

I heard a cable tv news guest suggest this morning that AL Jazeera was not covering Bahrain with the same intensity it had covered previous protests.

The Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network has been credited with helping to sustain protest movements across the region with its wall-to-wall coverage, but will its editorial line change now that Qatar has voiced support for Saudi intervention in Bahrain?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/03/qatar-bahrain-saudi-arabia-protests-troops-security.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef0147e33ec55e970b

Al Jazeera is considered among the most credible Arabic news sources, but it has been accused at certain times of allowing its royal backer's political affiliations to skew its coverage. Al Jazeera Arabic, in particular, has recently been criticized for what some see as its overly careful handling of violent clashes between Bahraini protesters and government forces.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

for shame. you'd never catch a US news network displaying a national bias.

Although even if they tried to cover Bahrain in more depth, the Bahrain and Saudi forces would likely come down on them

people hold Al-Jazeera to a higher standard than Fox!

Sarkozy election campaign was funded by Libya, says Saif Gaddafi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/sarkozy-election-campaign-libya-claim?CMP=twt_gu

Probably just trolling though? At this point, all Gaddafi can get from relations with the West is lolz.

The West let him retake his country with force, and the Russians and Chinese may ignore embargos and keep his regime functioning.

Among those options are jamming Libyan government radio signals and financing the rebel forces with $32 billion in Libyan government and Qaddafi family funds frozen by the United States. That money could be used either for weapons or relief. The meeting broke without a decision, the official said. from NY Times

The fact that these are still just "options" and not being done makes clear that Libya is not a US priority

xp - I don't think you'll see any European/American politicians palling around with him for a while. Sure, Russia and China will be happy to make up.

the west's painful dithering over the past few weeks as though they might actually do something useful has been the most pathetic sight

I agree it's been awful to watch, though in retrospect it was always unlikely that there would be any intervention.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175367/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_pentagon_and_murder_in_bahrain/#more

How the Pentagon and military contractors and others have worked with Bahrain in recent years

Libya is a HUGE priority for the US. Keeping it "stable" means not opening the can of worms that comprises all these armed opposition groups. I don't think it's any deeper than that.

Moreover, senior officials, notably the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, have made it clear that the United States does not view Libya as a vital strategic interest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/africa/17libya.html?hp

The article provides no justification for that claim. It doesn't even mention what Donilon said.

I mean, it's weird working through what the article is trying to suggest - that the United States will not intervene militarily because it does not see Libya as "vital strategic interest".

This depends on the idea that the United States prefers democracy in places where it has a "vital strategic interest", but that's a weird notion, totally undemonstrated by the evidence.

Surely if Libya (specifically, its resources) were a "vital strategic interest", the United States would do anything in its power to stop a truly democratic movement from gaining power. Given that the US's actions (or lack of actions) appear certain to redeliver power to Ghadafi (or one of his cronies) it's at least logical to suppose that Libya really is of strategic interest to the United States.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/four-new-york-times-journalists-are-missing-in-libya/?src=tptw

I mean, it's weird working through what the article is trying to suggest - that the United States will not intervene militarily because it does not see Libya as "vital strategic interest".

This depends on the idea that the United States prefers democracy in places where it has a "vital strategic interest", but that's a weird notion, totally undemonstrated by the evidence.

Surely if Libya (specifically, its resources) were a "vital strategic interest", the United States would do anything in its power to stop a truly democratic movement from gaining power. Given that the US's actions (or lack of actions) appear certain to redeliver power to Ghadafi (or one of his cronies) it's at least logical to suppose that Libya really is of strategic interest to the United States.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 5:05 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

the US isn't that... not sure of the word here. but let's look at it another way. does the US operate in its national interest in pakistan? it's extremely hard to say. it does seem to work partly according to opportunity, inertia, and other things unrelated to a cool appraisal of the facts.

besides, there's no 'truly democratic movement' that can't be channelled -- at any rate, truman knew this.

and i don't think the US has been that keen on gadaffi, historically, as it goes, really, and in the grand scheme it really hasn't been a 'vital' strategic interest, more a pimple to deal with occasionally.

all these armed opposition groups

The New York Times article referred to a "ragtag" rebel group getting routed. I guess they can be armed and ragtag.

The Pentagon and State Department also seem to have slightly different views on this as Hilary Clinton met with representatives of Libya's rebel opposition.

The US does not rely on Libyan oil.

Given that the US's actions (or lack of actions) appear certain to redeliver power to Ghadafi (or one of his cronies) it's at least logical to suppose that Libya really is of strategic interest to the United States.

No, it can mean the Pentagon strategy while the US military is busy struggling in Afghanistan and Iraq is to not have American soldiers injured or killed in a country that is not economically or politically important to the US. The Pentagon has put the bad things Ghadaffi did to Americans in prior years behind them, and does not see him as a current threat.

aspects of this are interesting:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8386511/Libya-Barack-Obama-is-in-no-hurry-to-see-Gaddafi-go.html

The Pentagon has put the bad things Ghadaffi did to Americans in prior years behind them, and does not see him as a current threat.

This is my point exactly.

While the US doesn't rely on Libyan oil, lots of other countries do, and it's in the US interest to make sure that it is supplied in a predictable manner.

im guessing you'd be against the US intervening

I don't think any good could come of it, given the US's priorities in the region. Given the kinds of people they usually support. I'd be in favor of an intervention that was intended to give full power and sovereignty to a democratic Libya though.

i guess part of what im asking is how a libyan economy functions without selling oil...? the flipside of the US 'relying on oil' is oil countries depending on people to buy their oil. given that obama and everyone else has called on gadaffi to go, things aren't predictable even if (well, when, now), he stays in power. but he's not a big enough player to hold anyone to ransom. ie he's not the house of saud.

xpost

i'll take that as a no, i guess

I'd be in favor of an intervention that was intended to give full power and sovereignty to a democratic Libya though.

given that no such disinterested force has existed in the history of the world. even the benevolent liberation of europe in 1944-5 did not give full power and sovereignty to, say, italy, and it's pretty clear the US worked pretty damn hard to prevent it elsewhere.

Yeah :(

It's not clear that there's a 'democratic Libya' available to support, more's the pity. The first rule of intervening surely must be 'know what you're intervening for'?

Also, the Italy case is an interesting one I feel. I've seen it written that the US subverted Italian elections in 1948 and thereby prevented a Communist government in 1948, which surely nobody would now consider a bad thing to have done. It casts a new light on handwringing over the subversion of democracy in Iran in 1953 - could say it was the same event even, just that in Italy it was ultimately for the best and in Iran it wasn't (definitions of 'the best' permitting).

yeah i was about to say about italy. on the whole, a communist victory would have been pretty bad. im sure there's a alternaverse where the US liberated europe and was then just like 'g2g bitches', but down here...

in the libyan situation, i don't know what to think.

The first rule of intervening surely must be 'know what you're intervening for'?

But is this ever as obvious and clear-cut as one would like

iirc clinton's been meeting with rebel delegations this week. they've had a month to get some idea. and -- subversion of democracy alert -- the US would have an impact on the outcome. if the outcome is more rather than less democratic, well, that would be better than bad.

thereby prevented a Communist government in 1948, which surely nobody would now consider a bad thing to have done

Speak for yourself

really?

I've no idea how an Italian Communist government in 1948, democratically elected, would have turned out. If it went wrong you could always pull an Allende on them I suppose.

That was my first reaction, too, Tom.

Also, I don't really know exactly where the Italian Communists were at in 1948 but, for the next 30-40 years they were basically the main part of the left in Italy and not a bunch of raving wild-eyed Bolsheviks afaik

Should read or listen to the "Little world of Don Camillo" IMO

i guess part of what im asking is how a libyan economy functions without selling oil...?

I'm guessing some country or countries will ignore embargos and buy some oil from Libya.

A TomDispatch analysis of Defense Department documents indicates that, since the 1990s, the United States has transferred large quantities of military materiel, ranging from trucks and aircraft to machine-gun parts and millions of rounds of live ammunition, to Bahrain’s security forces.

...

In addition to all these gifts of weaponry, ammunition, and fighting vehicles, the Pentagon in coordination with the State Department oversaw Bahrain’s purchase of more than $386 million in defense items and services from 2007 to 2009, the last three years on record. These deals included the purchase of a wide range of items from vehicles to weapons systems. Just this past summer, to cite one example, the Pentagon announced a multimillion-dollar contract with Sikorsky Aircraft to customize nine Black Hawk helicopters for Bahrain’s Defense Force.

Business as usual