Fucks sake, Gaddafi.
Fucks sake, Gaddafi.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Worked before I guess.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
So, a thread within a thread. Place your bets!
1) He will commit suicide
2) He will be killed by someone within his military
3) He will be killed by someone in his own family
4) He will be found hiding and killed by the rebels
5) He will be found hiding and tried for crimes against humanity
You forgot the option 'trips over his cat and breaks his neck'.
Hard to tell still what will happen with the man whose name has 112 different versions when transcribed in latin letters. He's beaten God already, no wonder that he feels he's destined to rule.
Congratulations America
[/QUOTE]
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
February 27, 2011
U.S. and Allies Weigh Options for No-Fly Zone Over Libya
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials held talks on Sunday with European and other allied governments as they readied plans for the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent further killings of civilians by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Further increasing international pressure on Colonel Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, Italy suspended a 2008 treaty with Libya that includes a nonaggression clause, a move that could allow it to take part in future peacekeeping operations in Libya or enable the use of its military bases in any possible intervention.
“We signed the friendship treaty with a state, but when the counterpart no longer exists — in this case the Libyan state — the treaty cannot be applied,” Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said Sunday in a television interview.
White House, State Department and Pentagon officials held talks with their European and North Atlantic Treaty Organization counterparts about how to proceed in imposing flight restrictions over Libya. A senior administration official said Sunday that no decision had been made, and expressed caution that any decision on a no-fly zone would have to be made in consultations with allies.
A diplomat at the United Nations said that any such action would require further debate among the 15 nations of the Security Council, which was unlikely to act unless there was a significant increase in state-sponsored violence in Libya, including the use of aircraft against civilians.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, was scheduled to meet with President Obama on Monday afternoon at the White House to discuss the deteriorating situation in Libya.
Obama administration officials said Sunday that they were also discussing whether the American military could disrupt communications to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from broadcasting in Libya. In addition, the administration was looking at whether the military could be used to set up a corridor in neighboring Tunisia or Egypt to assist refugees.
“There hasn’t been discussion that I’m aware of related to military intervention beyond that, and a discussion of that nature would have to begin at the U.N.,” a senior administration official said. But, the official added, “I wouldn’t say we’ve ruled anything out, either.”
Italy’s treaty with Libya, signed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in August 2008, calls on Italy to pay Libya $5 billion over 20 years in reparations for its colonial past there. In return, Libya pledged to help block the flow of illegal immigrants to Italy and grant favorable treatment for Italian companies seeking to do business in Libya.
But the treaty also contains a nonaggression clause that some analysts said complicated Italy’s position in the event of international military intervention in Libya. In it, Italy pledges not to use “direct or indirect” military force against Libya, or to allow the use of its territory “in any hostile act against Libya.”
There are several United States and NATO bases in Italy that presumably would be staging areas for any action against Libya, including the United States Sixth Fleet base near Naples. After the treaty was signed, Italy had to explain to NATO that it would respect its multilateral international treaties.
An Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maurizio Massari, noted that Italy had suspended the treaty, not revoked it, and would evaluate how to proceed as the conflict in Libya evolved.
At the United Nations, there was no formal discussion about Libya on Sunday, as diplomats weighed possible next steps and digested the Security Council resolutions passed Saturday night that imposed an arms embargo and economic sanctions on Libya.
An American official, who discussed United Nations deliberations on the condition that he not be identified, said the Security Council had moved more quickly on Libya than on almost any issue in recent years. The body is poised to take further steps, if warranted, like “a rapid deterioration, a significant uptick in violence,” he said. “In terms of big ideas like a no-fly zone, if the international community is ready, and there is a need to impose a no-fly zone or authorize use of force, that would require another whole debate and resolution.”
Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington and Rachel Donadio from Rome.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/wo...8military.html
We'll see about that weasling action when the United States of Cats takes you over.“We signed the friendship treaty with a state, but when the counterpart no longer exists — in this case the Libyan state — the treaty cannot be applied,” Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said Sunday in a television interview.
Perfidious Zionists are MANIPULATING THIS CRISIS.
February 27, 2011
Qaddafi YouTube Spoof by Israeli Gets Arab Fans
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM — A YouTube clip mocking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s megalomania is fast becoming a popular token of the Libya uprising across the Middle East. And in an added affront to Colonel Qaddafi, it was created by an Israeli living in Tel Aviv.
Noy Alooshe, 31, an Israeli journalist, musician and Internet buff, said he saw Colonel Qaddafi’s televised speech last Tuesday in which the Libyan leader vowed to hunt down protesters “inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway,” and immediately identified it as a “classic.”
“He was dressed strangely, and he raised his arms” like at a trance party, Mr. Alooshe said Sunday in a telephone interview, referring to the gatherings that feature electronic dance music. Then there were Colonel Qaddafi’s words with their natural beat.
Mr. Alooshe spent a few hours at the computer, using pitch corrector technology to set the speech to the music of “Hey Baby,” a song by the American rapper Pitbull, featuring another artist, T-Pain. Mr. Alooshe titled it “Zenga-Zenga,” echoing Colonel Qaddafi’s repetition of the word zanqa, Arabic for alleyway.
By the early hours of Wednesday morning, Mr. Alooshe had uploaded the electro hip-hop remix to YouTube, and he began promoting it on Twitter and Facebook, sending the link to the pages of young Arab revolutionaries. By Sunday night, the original clip had received nearly 500,000 hits and had gone viral.
Mr. Alooshe, who at first did not identify himself on the clip as an Israeli, started receiving enthusiastic messages from all around the Arab world. Web surfers soon discovered that he was a Jewish Israeli from his Facebook profile — Mr. Alooshe plays in a band called Hovevey Zion, or the Lovers of Zion — and some of the accolades turned to curses. A few also found the video distasteful.
But the reactions have largely been positive, including a message Mr. Alooshe said he received from someone he assumed to be from the Libyan opposition saying that if and when the Qaddafi regime fell, “We will dance to ‘Zenga-Zenga’ in the square.”
The original clip features mirror images of a scantily clad woman dancing along to Colonel Qaddafi’s rant. Mr. Alooshe said he got many requests from Web surfers who asked him for a version without the dancer so that they could show it to their parents, which he did.
Mr. Alooshe speaks no Arabic, though his grandparents were from Tunisia. He said he used Google Translate every few hours to check messages and remove any offensive remarks.
Israelis have been watching the events in Libya unfold with the same rapt attention as they have to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
In the past, Colonel Qaddafi has proposed that Palestinian refugees should return en masse by ship to Israel’s shores, and that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into one state called Isratine.
Mr. Alooshe said he was a little worried that if the Libyan leader survived, he could send one of his sons after him. But he said it was “also very exciting to be making waves in the Arab world as an Israeli.”
As one surfer wrote in an Arabic talkback early Sunday, “What’s the problem if he’s an Israeli? The video is still funny.” He signed off with the internationally recognized “Hahaha.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/wo...28youtube.html
JEWS
Okay I'll stop.
Guardian! Of all places
Our absurd obsession with Israel is laid bare
The Middle East meant only Israel to many. Now the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe's attention
Nick Cohen
Sunday 27 February 2011
The Arab revolution is consigning skip-loads of articles, books and speeches about the Middle East to the dustbin of history. In a few months, readers will go through libraries or newspaper archives and wonder how so many who claimed expert knowledge could have turned their eyes from tyranny and its consequences.
To a generation of politically active if not morally consistent campaigners, the Middle East has meant Israel and only Israel. In theory, they should have been able to stick by universal principles and support a just settlement for the Palestinians while opposing the dictators who kept Arabs subjugated. Few, however, have been able to oppose oppression in all its forms consistently. The right has been no better than the liberal-left in its Jew obsessions. The briefest reading of Conservative newspapers shows that at all times their first concern about political changes in the Middle East is how they affect Israel. For both sides, the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten.
If you doubt me, consider the stories that the Middle Eastern bureau chiefs missed until revolutions that had nothing to do with Palestine forced them to take notice.
• Gaddafi was so frightened of a coup that he kept the Libyan army small and ill-equipped and hired mercenaries and paramilitary "special forces" he could count on to slaughter the civilian population when required.
• Leila Ben Ali, the wife of the Tunisian president, was a preposterously extravagant figure, who all but begged foreign correspondents to write about her rapacious pursuit of wealth. Only when Tunisians rose up did journalists stir themselves to tell their readers how she had pushed the populace to revolt by combining the least appealing traits of Imelda Marcos and Marie-Antoinette.
• Hearteningly, for those of us who retain a nostalgia for the best traditions of the old left, Tunisia and Egypt had independent trade unionists, who could play "a leading role", as we used to say, in organising and executing uprisings.
Far from being a cause of the revolution, antagonism to Israel everywhere served the interests of oppressors. Europeans have no right to be surprised. Of all people, we ought to know from our experience of Nazism that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about power, rather than a standard racist hatred of poor immigrants. Fascistic regimes reached for it when they sought to deny their own people liberty. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forgery the far-right wing of the decaying tsarist regime issued in 1903 to convince Russians they should continue to obey the tsar's every command, denounces human rights and democracy as facades behind which the secret Jewish rulers of the world manipulated gullible gentiles.
Syrian Ba'athists, Hamas, the Saudi monarchy and Gaddafi eagerly promoted the Protocols, for why wouldn't vicious elites welcome a fantasy that dismissed democracy as a fraud and justified their domination? Just before the Libyan revolt, Gaddafi tried a desperate move his European predecessors would have understood. He tried to deflect Libyan anger by calling for a popular Palestinian revolution against Israel. That may or may not have been justified, but it assuredly would have done nothing to help the wretched Libyans.
In his Epitaph on a Tyrant, Auden wrote:
"When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter
And when he cried, the little children died in the streets."
Europe's amnesia about how tyranny operated in our continent explains why the Libyan revolution is embarrassing a rich collection of dupes and scoundrels who were willing to laugh along with Gaddafi. His contacts in Britain were once confined to the truly lunatic fringe. He supplied arms to the IRA, funded the Workers' Revolutionary Party, Vanessa Redgrave's nasty Trotskyist sect, and entertained Nick Griffin and other neo-Nazis. We should not forget them when the time comes to settle accounts. But when Tony Blair, who was so eloquent in denouncing the genocides of Saddam, staged a reconciliation with Gaddafi after 9/11, his friendship opened the way for the British establishment to embrace the dictatorship.
It was not only BP and other oil companies, but British academics who were happy to accept his largesse. The London School of Economics took £1.5m from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, money which by definition had to have been stolen from the Libyan people, despite being warned to back away by Professor Fred Halliday, the LSE's late and much-missed authority on the Middle East, who never flinched from looking dictators in the eye.
"I've come to know Saif as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration," purred the LSE's David Held as he accepted the cheque. Human Rights Watch, once a reliable opponent of tyranny, went further and described a foundation Saif ran in Libya as a force for freedom, willing to take on the interior ministry in the fight for civil liberties. Meanwhile, and to the surprise of no one, Peter Mandelson, New Labour's butterfly, fluttered round Saif at the country house parties of the plutocracy.
Last week, Saif, the "liberal" promoter of human rights and dining companion of Mandelson, appeared on Libyan television to say that his father's gunmen would fight to the last bullet to keep the Gaddafi crime family in business, a promise he is keeping. The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern.
The longevity of the regimes presided over by the Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak families and the House of Saud ought to be a reason for denouncing them more vigorously, but their apparent permanence added to the feeling that somehow Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians and Saudis want to live under dictatorships.
The European Union, which did so much to export democracy and the rule of law to former communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, has played a miserable role in the Middle East. It pours in aid but never demands democratisation or restrictions on police powers in return. That will have to change if the promise of the past month is to be realised. If it is to help with democracy-building, Europe will need to remind itself as much as the recipients of its money that you can never build free societies on the racist conspiracy theories of the Nazis and the tsars. They are and always have been the tunes that tyrants sing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-east-conflict
There is nothing funny about that last article, what he writes is true. Both Europe and the US are quite willing to turn a blind eye to the negative sides of us doing serious business with tyrants. Can any of us honestly say we feel totally at ease using the energy that pays for the house of Saud to oppress its people through a perverse mesh of religious police? That we drive cars when women in that sublime kingdom are not allowed to do so, very often aren't even allowed out of the four walls of their home?
People in Oman are protesting; that may result in the scrapping of a state visit of Queen Beatrix. A business leader got to comment on that possibility. He said he would regret it if the visit were cancelled, because it would rob Dutch business leaders of a situation in which they could hobnob with 'the people who make decisions in that kind of country'. Even if the writing on the walls is in blood it appears we still rather deal with dictators than see people take back their rights.
Congratulations America
So, the US is a bad country for invading other countries and implementing democracy... it's also bad because they don't invade other countries and don't implement democracy? The only other alternative is to completely stop any sort of trade with the offending country. The US stopping trade with other countries has worked fairly well in both the cases of North Korea and Iran, amirite? !?!?!?!
What is the US supposed to do??? Damned if you don't, damned if you do!
For starters, we should stop acting like we're the worlds' police. Or that we're the main force behind democratization of the middle east.Originally Posted by agamemnus
Hazir is right. The west would rather turn a blind eye to any place that has oil and money, than actually stand up for people's rights. We've spent so many years and so many bucks supporting the devils we knew (dictators) because it looked like stability, that we don't know what to do once the people demand democracy. With all its messiness, chaos, and uncertainty.
And let's not forget that the money to arm those tyrants was stolen from the people's we let them oppress in the first place.
Congratulations America
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41850257...deastn_africa/ --- includes a slideshow.Fleeing fighting, desperate refugees jam Libya's borders
In desperate scenes, tens of thousands trying to get into Tunisia
Tens of thousands of desperate refugees were packing the Tunisian border on Tuesday, trying to get out of Libya as the situation there worsened, humanitarian agencies and media reports said.
Tunisian border guards fired into the air to try to control a throng of people clamoring to get out. Some people were throwing their bags over a wall between the border posts and trying to climb over, prompting border guards first to hit them with sticks and then to fire warning shots, Reuters reported.
"I was in shock when I first arrived. There are thousands and thousands of people waiting to cross," Katherine Roux, communications officer for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said from the border crossing at Ras Jdir. "The biggest thing that hits me is just the desperation of people when you see migrants come in, I mean you know how far they have walked. They're carrying baggage, blankets. It’s really devastating."
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said 14,000 people crossed the border Monday, the highest number in one day since the protests began in mid-February. Another 10,000-15,000 were expected to leave Tuesday.
"There is a lot of tension right at the border gates," Roux said. "You can tell they have been fighting to get over."
A Reuters reporter saw at least three people being taken out of the crowd by Red Crescent medical teams after fainting in the crush of bodies.
Tunisian authorities said 70,000-75,000 people have arrived from Libya since Feb. 20, the U.N. said in a statement. Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities say 69,000 people have crossed over from Libya since Feb. 19, The Associated Press reported.
"We can see acres of people waiting to cross the border. Many have been waiting for three to four days in the freezing cold, with no shelter or food," Ayman Gharaibeh, head of the UNHCR emergency response team at the border, said in the statement. "Usually the first three days of the crisis are the worst. This seems to be getting worse by the day."
Sumaya Beltifa, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said those waiting in the no-man's land between the two borders were in a "quite dramatic" situation. On Tuesday, she said she saw some people unsuccessfully trying to climb over a wall to enter Tunisia, while people on the other side threw bottles of water to those waiting.
The refugees were mainly Egyptians, but there were also Tunisians, Chinese, Bangladeshis, Nigerians and South Koreans. Most of them were young, healthy men, the aid groups said.
"This is the only reason why the situation has not degenerated into a huge crisis so far," Gharaibeh said.
At Ras Jdir, if any refugees needed medical attention, it was "mostly due to shock," Roux said. "There hasn't been anyone that's arrived with gunshot wounds or anything extremely serious."
A camp has been set up about 3 miles away housing at least 5,000 others. Another several thousand people were in the area of the crossing on the Tunisian side, Roux said.
"The most pressing need ... is just the evacuation of the migrants that are here," she said.
One Egyptian at the camp told Reuters: "When are we going to be taken out of here? We cannot accept this." He added: "Give me a camel. I will take a camel. I just want to go home."
Beltifa, of the Red Cross, noted there have been unconfirmed reports that Egyptians who had crossed the border said they had been picked up by pro-Gadhafi forces and brought to the Tunisian border rather than the one with Egypt.
"Many Egyptians, they are frustrated and they have great anger against their country because Egypt didn't really succeed to evacuate them," she said.
UNHCR said it aimed to provide shelter to about 12,000 people by Tuesday night and was expecting more tents and supplies to arrive Thursday.
It was "becoming critically important that onwards transport becomes quickly available to avoid a humanitarian crisis," UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told journalists in Geneva.
Other aid officials say humanitarian aid workers are being blocked from reaching western Libya and patients reportedly are being executed in hospitals, AP reported.
Sounds like a horrible mess. If most are young, healthy men....where are the women and children?
Well, if it are mostly migrant workers their women and children are probably at home.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Sounds like most of these refugees were migrant workers who - if they have wives and children at all - leave their families back home.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41850257...deastn_africa/ --- includes a slideshow.
Sounds like a horrible mess. If most are young, healthy men....where are the women and children?
Congratulations America
So now they are holding some dutch soldiers. This should be good..
It would be a start to not actually support such regimes (e.g.Mubarak, Saudi Arabia).
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
We are on top. Other countries are jealous of America's wealth and power. So in reality it doesn't matter what we do, the United States will always be vilified by some group. Which is why I've always said America really shouldn't care about what other countries think about our policies. Teach rouge regimes fear of our power and ignore the vast majority of toothless countries in Europe. (A few exceptions exist, like UK and Poland who have proven to be loyal allies).
poland not toothless? LOL.
There are but 2 countries in Europe that are not toothless and those are the ones that have nukes of their own. That's the UK and France. (and Russia but lets consider it a unit on its own).
Haha, Polant can not even into space
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
I don't think he was saying Poland isn't toothless, but that Poland shouldn't be ignored because its an ally.
That's maybe what he wanted to say, but certainly not what he said.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Still makes you wonder why he mentioned Poland; if you take Poland to be relevant you should definately mention those countries that don't only talk the US talk but do the walk as well.
Congratulations America
Poland has one of the largest contributions to ISAF and actually meets the NATO-mandated minimum for defense spending (something Germany and the Netherlands fall short of, not to mention Italy, Spain, and a whole host of countries richer than Poland). They pull their weight.
I'm pretty certain there was a Dutch contingent up till last year and there is talk again about a new mission. Anyway, even without that type of details it's outright silly to single out Poland for mention. Especially now that the twin idiots no longer are in charge.
That minimum for defense spending is all nice and such, but hardly makes Poland a special US ally. It tells more about a country needing to integrate its armed forces into NATO after having belonged to the Warsaw pact for decades.
Congratulations America
The Dutch are in the august company of S. Korea, the Swiss, and Jordan for countries who have pulled troops out of ISAF. Even though the Germans and French attach ridiculous caveats, at least they're still there and have significant numbers. Note I'm not trying to single out the Dutch here; there are a lot of NATO members whose defense budgets and contributions to ISAF have been lackluster. To be honest, only the Brits, Canadians, and Poles have really punched above their weight in the fight.
Furthermore, the Poles were one of a handful of countries to contribute a significant number of troops to MNF-I, peaking at around 2500, and they stuck it out longer than most US allies. I think only the UK and South Koreans had more non-US troops in Iraq.
They've toed the US line on defense much more so than other NATO members, for better or worse. I wouldn't say they're a critical ally because they simply don't have a very large or sophisticated military, and they are not an economic or political power. Yet if you're trying to make up a list of countries who are 'loyal allies' in the sense of giving significant contribution to US military endeavors around the globe, Poland will be on a very short list. Obviously the UK tops the list, and Canada is often an important adjunct as well. After that, though, the pickings get pretty slim and Poland's near the top of the heap.
I'm not saying this makes other US allies unimportant or not valued; quite the contrary. The US needs France and Germany a whole lot more than they need the Poles. But the Poles do deserve our thanks for doing some pretty thankless tasks with poor equipment, and doing it without much complaints. This is in sharp contrast to most of NATO's foot-dragging on getting enough troops for ISAF.
Please. Plenty of post-Warsaw Pact NATO members aren't embarking on ambitious modernization programs; in fact, they rely heavily on US guarantees of their safety. Furthermore, that doesn't excuse other NATO members from keeping their military up to spec (I'm looking at you, Germany).That minimum for defense spending is all nice and such, but hardly makes Poland a special US ally. It tells more about a country needing to integrate its armed forces into NATO after having belonged to the Warsaw pact for decades.
We never had troops in the ISAF, only in the KFOR and there are Swiss troops at the Korean borders. We are not NATO member anyway.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Uhm, that's why it's ridiculous that the Netherlands are in the company of those three nations - all three are NOT NATO members. The Swiss had two members of a German provicial reconstruction team that was part of ISAF, and a few other staff here or there. The Jordanians had a small contingent running a hospital. The Koreans had some engineers and medics that they pulled out later. The Dutch are the only significant combat force to pull out, and the only NATO members to do so.
In our defense, we gave a time limit when we first joined and that was extended a few times in spite of made promises. And it became clear that we joined in iraq based on american lies (that's not really something you're supposed to do to allies) so it's not all that surprising prolonging again, against promises, was not too popular. And iirc we still have planes there and are sending police trainers.
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