Let freedom ring.

Gaddafi's one-hour rant from some barack...it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic for his people. One should actually be able to figure out where he is based on the reflection in his glasses. Looks like he is speaking from some outdoor barack. I think you can see a reflection of some minarets or something in his glasses. Someone take him out.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wdQr7HBi6ig" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Quit trying to tie everything negative to Obama!

 

Let's say you a charismatic guy and you lead a popular overthrow of some despot. But alas, you have a disparate, restive, remote, tribal society that is organized around several warlord chieftains that would lead their own people autonomously if they could. So you accept client status from some super power to supply and train your army and you set about to maintain and control the government, for the greater good of course.

If you try to allow for free elections the tribal leaders will control their own regions. So you set about organizing a structure you can control, by the usual means, cronyism, nepotism and feudalism. Soon you are the despot. To you, demonstrators in the streets are a threat to stability; seditious traitors committing capital crimes.


Maybe the only way to avoid despotism is to adopt a Ghandi-like denial of Earthly desires but that is not normal human behavior.




Democracy and egalitarianism depend on an informed, educated populace; with increasing economic opportunity i.e. the hope that the children will live better than their parents.

Gaddafi's former number two resigns in support of protesters (Extra)

 

There are reasons for why growth has not trickled down. It has little to do with Guddafi and his family stealing money like the rich in Eypgt. Unfortunately the economy was thrown back 20 years from the sanctions/embargo, don't underestimate what these penalties do to a country. Libya would be very similar to UAE right now if didn't happen. They are flush with cheap high grade oil, even with a monkey running things they should be able to make everyone happy. There are obvious policy mistakes by Guddafi as well, like placing locals in technical position in the oil industry, just horrible management. They should have taken the UAE strategy (which they have tried to do since the embargo was lifted, but getting external powers to invest in the country was difficult but they got that going as well recently).

Lighting the fire on spilt gasoline is exactly what they did. Small actions resulting in big consequences. Having said that, you are right, doesn't take away the feelings that were probably already at a boiling point.

The last thing you want to admit is that some external power is playing you out of town.

Actually that location is his palace, its where the US bombed his home when they tried to kill him, but got his daughter instead. That locations was picked for obvious reasons.

 

Just had to quote this again because it is so wrong.

Interior minister resigns rather than carry out Gadhafi orders

Tobruk, Libya (CNN) -- Libya's interior minister said Wednesday he has quit the government and is supporting the protesters, who he predicted will achieve victory in "days or hours."
Ex-Interior Minister Abdul Fattah Younis al Abidi told CNN that he resigned Monday after hearing that some 300 unarmed civilians had been killed in Benghazi during the prior two to three days. He accused Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi of planning to attack civilians on a wide scale.
"Gadhafi told me he was planning on using airplanes against the people in Benghazi, and I told him that he will have thousands of people killed if he does that," Abidi said in an Arabic-language telephone interview conducted Wednesday.
Abidi said he now supports the people and the revolution.
He called Gadhafi "a stubborn man" who will not give up. "He will either commit suicide or he will get killed," said Abidi, who said he has known him since 1964.
Abidi predicted the revolution will succeed "in a matter of days or hours," and he called on Libyan security forces "to join the people in the intifada." Already, he said, "many members" of the security forces had defected, including those in the capital, Tripoli.
He said the entire eastern part of the country is no longer under Gadhafi's control and that security forces there have orders to never open fire on the people unless forced to do so in self-defense.

The Libyan ambassador to the United States, Ali Aujali, also called for Gadhafi to resign, joining a chorus of Libyan officials, including the deputy ambassador to the United Nations, who say they now work for the Libyan people, not for Gadhafi.
Among them was the Libyan ambassador to Bangladesh, A.H. Elimam, who resigned to side with pro-democracy protesters, said BSS, the official news agency of Bangladesh, citing a Foreign Ministry official Tuesday.
Their announcements came eight days into protests that have cost Gadhafi control of eastern Libya and the support of other prominent Libyan officials worldwide and hours after Gadhafi delivered a defiant, rambling speech Tuesday, refusing calls to step down.
"This is my country, the country of my grandfathers," Gadhafi said in remarks carried live on Libyan state television. He vowed to die "a martyr" in his country.
Blaming the unrest on "rats" who are "agents" of foreign intelligence services, Gadhafi said people found to be cooperating with outside forces fomenting discord and those who carry weapons against the country will be executed. (...)

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/22/libya.protests/index.html


------

But no, ChrisBosh assures us that "Gaddafi is no brute" .

 

I was just spewing out second hand info from people I know. From what I had heard he had done quite a bit for the poor. His past record did not exactly scream "Guddafi the brute". But I guess he's shown his true colors over the last few days. He is scum, no doubt about it.

 

Seriously? I mean...seriously?

Does the word "Lockerbie" ring a bell?

Or this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_al-Gaddafi

That is just the tip of the iceberg. Also, you can read this:

Colonel Gaddafi was ‘greatest, state-sponsored terror threat of 1980s

and this:

Gaddafi's Blood-Soaked Hands

It was not long after he received a secret warning from the Italian government in April 1986 and narrowly escaped being blown to bits by American bombers that Muammar Gaddafi declared his intention to become Emperor of Africa. What followed as the increasingly erratic Gaddafi pursued his megalomaniacal dream was one of the most obscene and violent episodes in recent African history.
Drawing recruits from his terrorism camps, Gaddafi trained, armed and dispatched thugs like Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh to take power in West African countries, initiating the brutal slaughter of innocents in Liberia and Sierra Leone, says David M. Crane, the founding prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. “This was a long-term criminal conspiracy,” says Crane, who is now a professor at Syracuse University, and “[Gaddafi] was the center point.”
For those who don't remember, here's a quick summary of the atrocities that took place in the war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. In pursuit of diamonds, timber and gold, Sankoh, backed by Taylor, backed by Gaddafi, invaded Sierra Leone and instituted a campaign of terror, cutting off the arms and other body parts of civilians to frighten the country into compliance. Rape was a widespread weapon of war, and according to reporting by one human rights organization, Sankoh's troops played a game where they would bet on the sex of a baby being carried by a pregnant captive, then cut the fetus out of the woman to determine its gender.
Sankoh died in custody after the war ended; Taylor is currently being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Gaddafi is named in Taylor's indictment, and Taylor has testified to Gaddafi's involvement. Crane says he found evidence that when Sankoh invaded Sierra Leone, “Libyan special forces were there helping train and assist them tactically and there were Libyan arms in that invasion: he had been involved from the get go.”
Tuesday afternoon, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement suggesting Gaddafi might be called to task for the current bloodshed in Libya, which has reportedly included unprovoked and lethal assaults by foreign African mercenaries against innocent protesters. “The members of the Security Council stressed the importance of accountability,” the statement said, “They underscored the need to hold to account those responsible for attacks, including by forces under their control, on civilians.”
Anyone holding Gaddafi to account will have a long ledger to work from. It was Gaddafi, after all, who ordered the attack on the West Berlin disco that killed two U.S. servicemen and prompted the 1986 U.S. bombing known as operation El Dorado Canyon. Gaddafi was behind the bombing of Pan Am 103, which killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. And until he gave them up after the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003, Gaddafi was pursuing nuclear and chemical weapons.
What would it mean for U.S. interests if Gaddafi were to be put on trial for any of the atrocities he's been responsible for over his four decades in power? On the surface, Gaddafi's fall should not pose the kind of threat to U.S. strategic interests that a disorderly transition in Egypt or Bahrain might. Egypt's relationship with Israel and its military cooperation with Washington are as important to the U.S. as the presence in Bahrain of the Navy's 5th fleet. But Gaddafi's sponsorship of the brutality in West Africa shows how Libya's vast oil wealth can allow it to project instability well beyond its borders in ways that can also threaten the U.S.
Another thug could replace Gaddafi. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday, "Would you imagine to have an Islamic Arab Emirate at the borders of Europe? This would be a very serious threat." U.S. officials are unconvinced the threat is as bad as Frattini says, and they note that Gaddafi himself has been peddling the danger. “We've heard [Gaddafi] say that there are caliphates being formed in Libya,” says a senior administration official. “There are very valid concerns about Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, but the fact that a bunch of people have taken territory in the east [of Libya] does not a caliphate make.”
The greater danger may be of Gaddafi staying. “In the recent past [he] has been better behaved,” says a senior administration official, “But go back 20 years or so and he was a significant sponsor of terrorist acts who had a nuclear program. So a major concern is does the regime retrench in ways that affect our interests in the region? Even before this happened he was complaining that his gesture in giving up nukes had not been reciprocated with the kind of love he expected. If he somehow survives this he'll have no interest in improving relations with the west.”

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/22/gaddafis-blood-soaked-hands/#ixzz1Ekx2wcas

By the way, I have been watching Al Jazeera a lot, and when the TV is not on, their coverage here is also great:

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/africa/2011/02/22/live-blog-libya-feb-23

 

I thought it was understood that I was talking about his policy towards Libyans specifically. The fact that he's a terrorist supporter is not in question here. Mind you I also don't like the US foreign policy that probably drove this insane man even more crazier. But that's another story.

 

Wow.

Libyan Interior Minister Abdel Fattah Younes has been reportedly kidnapped in Benghazi after he had resigned to join protesters.

 

There is a report he's ordered security forces to sabotage and blow up oil pipelines.

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=209477

 

Not a brute? One example of Gaddafi's brutality in his own country:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,497234,00.html

Gadhafi's Torture Prison
Medic Recalls Eight Years in Libyan Jail


Palestinian-born Bulgarian doctor Ashraf al-Hazouz, 37, recalls his eight-year imprisonment in Libyan jails, describing his torture at the hands of Gadhafi's thugs and the ordeals of the five nurses imprisoned with him.


REUTERS
Palestinian doctor Ashraf al-Hazouz after his release: "We will make you suffer until you confess."
What was the worst moment in more than eight years of torture, humiliation and the fear of death? It was the moment of our release.
When the guards entered my cell at 3:30 in the morning on July 24, they didn't jingle their keys or shout the way they normally did. Instead, they whispered: "Ashraf, Ashraf, wake up! You must prepare yourself for a visit."

I jumped up, looked at the clock and felt an ominous sense of doom. Who would visit me at this time of the night? The thought flashed through my mind that they were going to shoot me now, and that they would later claim that I had tried to run away.

A few minutes later I was standing in the office of the prison warden. I was told to apply my fingerprints to a piece of paper to confirm that I wanted to leave the country for Bulgaria. The process was videotaped. They took me to the part of the prison where the five Bulgarian nurses were kept, and then they took all of us to the airport.

There I was asked, once again, whether I wanted to stay in Libya or travel to Gaza. "I want to go to Bulgaria," I replied. "You have destroyed my life, my family's life and the lives of these nurses. I do not wish to remain in this sort of a country for another second." The official was livid. "You are witnesses," he barked at the Palestinian and Bulgarian envoys.

Then I was sitting in the plane, ecstatic and feeling as if I had been reborn, accompanied by the five nurses, European Union (External Relations) Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the French president. When the plane took off I realized that the day would one day come when I would no longer be able to comprehend how I could have survived these eight years -- and that I would not even be able to explain the experience to anyone else.

My life in hell began back in August 1998. I had completed my medical exams in Libya and was working as an intern at the huge pediatric hospital in Benghazi, initially in the gastroenterology department. The infectious disease section was closed. A sign that read "HIV-infected" hung on the wall behind one of the beds in my area. The occupant of that bed was a seven-month-old baby that had undergone surgery in Egypt to correct a bone deformity. The child's infection was also detected at the Egyptian hospital. It was the first HIV case I saw.

I had already been working in another department for some time when, on Dec. 13, 1998, I was summoned to appear at a police station, where I was arrested. I spent the next three days in a tiny cell. The reason, I was later told, was to await the results of an HIV test, which turned out to be negative.

'Hundreds of Infected Children'

One of the officials said to me: "We have hundreds of infected children, and we know that you are to blame. You picked them up and injected them with the virus." I responded: "If that's true, then shoot me in public on the main square in Benghazi." Of course I picked up the children before each examination, but only to take away their fear.

"You have had sexual contact with a foreign woman," the police officer continued. It was only then that I realized that a scenario was taking shape that had been mapped out by someone higher up in the hierarchy and in which I had been chosen as the scapegoat -- I, a refugee from Palestine who had lived in Libya with my parents since I was two and for whom this country was in fact home.

My family is very conservative. My fiancée, a Palestinian, had died the year before, and I was just beginning to start a new life with another woman. Because I knew that the Bulgarian nurses at our hospital had also been interrogated, I assumed that the accusation of having had "sexual contact" involved one of them. But then the police let me go, telling me that I had only been there for routine questioning.

Benghazi was practically a war zone at the time, with a group of radical Islamists fighting in the streets. Our hospitals were filled with the injured, and hygienic conditions were disastrous. We didn't have any needles and the sterilization equipment was broken. A single pair of scissors was used to cut the umbilical cords of a dozen newborns. Seventy percent of the children infected with HIV also had hepatitis B.

The Libyan authorities were very concerned about the HIV infections. The government felt powerless to deal with a steadily rising AIDS rate caused by uninhibited sex and many things that happen behind closed doors. The hepatitis B epidemic was later confirmed by both the lower courts and Gadhafi's son, Seif al Islam, who studied abroad and is worldly. But his father's will is law in Libya, and he controls both the judiciary and the sentencing system. Moammar Gadhafi had to have someone to blame, someone to satisfy the furious parents of the infected children. Under no circumstances could any blame be assigned to the corrupt healthcare system, which the government neglects.

The Vanishing

When I returned to my dormitory on Jan. 29, 1999, after visiting my parents during Ramadan, I found a note instructing me to report to the chief of police once again. For the next 10 months, it was as if I had vanished from the face of the earth. My parents looked for me in hospitals and scanned the lists of the dead. It took them a long time to find out that I had been arrested.

At the police station on that Jan. 29, at 11:35 p.m., they put me in handcuffs, covered my face with a black mask and locked me into the trunk of a police car. For the next four hours the car was driven through the countryside at high speed. Those four hours seemed like four years to me. It was still dark when we arrived at a building in Tripoli. It was freezing cold. They had taken everything from me but my shirt and my trousers.

The next morning two men began to beat me. They shouted: "You infected the children with AIDS, and you were instructed to do so by the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. You and the foreign woman with whom you are sleeping. You came to our country as a spy. You are nothing but scum and filth."

Then they drove me to a building about four kilometers outside Tripoli. It was a sort of farm for police dogs -- the ideal place, from their perspective, because no one would be able to hear us scream.

Months of Torture

I was locked into a room with three dogs during the first few days. They ordered the animals to attack me. My leg is covered with scars from their bites. I had a large hole in my knee. I was served my meals in the bowl they used for the dogs. The five Bulgarian nurses were also being kept in this torture building. Every day our tormentors told us: "We will make you suffer until you confess." The torture periods were carried out between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m.. This went on for months.

One of the things they did was to wrap bare wire around my penis. Then they would drag me around a room that was at least 40 by 40 meters. I screamed and cried.

One of the most excruciating things was their electric torture machine -- a manually operated box that works like a generator. They would attach the negative cable to a finger and the positive cable to one of my ears or my genitals. The most painful part of it wasn't the current but the fact that they could change the rate at which it was applied. When I became unconscious they would pour cold water on my naked body and continue the procedure.

During the torture with electrical shocks, they would show me the passports of the five Bulgarian nurses and say: These are Kristiana, Nasya, Valentina, Valya and Snezhana. The nurses suffered the same fate as I did. But we were unable to communicate with each other because I didn't speak Bulgarian yet.

'I Am Ashamed about the Things they Did to the Women'

Sometimes we were tortured in the same room. I saw them half-naked and they saw me completely naked when I was being given the electroshocks. We heard each other whimpering, crying and screeching. Kristiana was hung up on a window while they put me on an iron pallet and applied the electroshocks. I am ashamed to talk about all the things they did to the women. They were raped. Kristiana was forced to put a bottle in her vagina. At one point Nasya, who couldn't stand it anymore, broke off a piece of window glass and slit her wrist. They took her to the hospital, under a false name, and then they brought her back to our torture chamber.

My cell was so small that I couldn't lie down. For one year I slept with my legs pulled up to my chest, leaning against the wall of the cell. (Hazouz sits on the floor and demonstrates how he spent his nights.) I was afraid that I would lose my mind, and I asked myself again and again: Why, of all people, did they pick you?

But the worst thing was that they threatened to torture my family and rape my sisters in front of my eyes. After God, my family is the most sacred thing I have, and I am the only brother of four sisters. At one point they brought in a girl, and all I could hear was her voice, screaming: "I am your sister. I am being raped."

I gave up. Tell me what you want me to do, I said, I will sign anything -- even that I confess to being responsible for the Lockerbie plane bombing. By then the police had notified my sister, who was in medical school in Tripoli, of my arrest. My father brought her home immediately.

I was transferred to the Jadida Prison in Tripoli on April 17, 2000, and I remained there until Feb. 4, 2002. The cells were 1.8 by 2.40 meters (6 by 8 feet), and most of them contained eight prisoners. We took turns sleeping in two-hour shifts. Four men would sleep with their knees pulled up to their chests, while the other four stood over them. After one year I was moved to a 5 by 10-meter (16 by 33-foot) room, which contained 70 prisoners. We were packed in like sardines, head to foot. If I had cows I wouldn't even put them so tightly together.

The guards brought the other prisoners Libyan newspapers, which accused us of being child murderers. The Arab papers also spread these lies, picking up their stories from Libyan sources. Instead of defending me, the Palestinian envoy claimed that I had confessed to him that I was a Mossad agent and had deliberately infected the children. Many of the prisoners believed this. We Arabs are hypocrites. We know the truth and yet we believe the lies.


AFP
Ashraf al-Hazouz in court with the five accused Bulgarian nurses: "Sometimes we were tortured in the same room."
In February 2002, thanks to the support of Gadhafi's son, Seif al Islam, the court dropped the charges against us of conspiring against the state. But the charge of infecting the 426 children was upheld.

After that we were placed under house arrest and lived together in a house consisting of four rooms, a kitchen and a garden. A restaurant provided us with our food. We were even permitted to shop in the city and go the dentist, escorted by a policeman. There was no more torture. We had satellite TV and were allowed to receive visitors. I learned Bulgarian. When the Bulgarian foreign minister, Solomon Passy, visited us in May 2002, I asked him for Bulgarian citizenship, which I received a few weeks before our departure -- at the urging of the European Union.

'We Know that You Are Innocent'

By this point in time, intensive negotiations for a possible release were already underway. One day the chief of security for Tripoli came to the house and said: "We know that you are innocent. You will be with your families in two months." But instead the court suddenly imposed the death penalty on May 6, 2004, despite the fact that French Professor Luc Montagnier and Italian Professor Vittoria Colizzi, both internationally renowned experts, had concluded that we were innocent.

Our next stop was the death row wing at the Tripoli prison, where prisoners were kept awaiting their executions. Of course, no one is immortal, and one day I too will die. But it is a terrible feeling when someone with whom you have just shared a meal a few hours ago is suddenly taken out and all you hear is gunshots. And when you yourself sit there, waiting, afraid that your name could be next ...


DPA
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Adhraf al-Hazouz claims, "needed someone to blame."
It was only on May 25, 2005 that I found out that I was going to live. That was when EU Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner came to me and said: "You are not alone. Twenty-five European countries support you. They are all convinced that you and the nurses are innocent."
During Germany's presidency of the EU Council, I also received a visit from German Foreign Minister (Frank-Walter) Steinmeier. I was wearing a watch with the EU symbol on it that the EU envoy had given me. Steinmeier was surprised, and I said to him: "I hope that I too will soon be a member of the EU. My family was granted asylum in the Netherlands on Dec. 19, 2005.

When they tried to isolate me from the Bulgarian group, the EU intervened. I became increasingly hopeful that I would soon be released from hell when the wife of French President (Nicolas) Sarkozy got involved. At the request of the EU, I signed a petition to be pardoned by Gadhafi -- a condition of our release.

When Bulgarian President (Georgi) Parvanov pardoned us within a few minutes of our arrival in Sofia, I suddenly felt that I had grown wings. Telecom Bulgaria, which is supported by the Bulgarian government, promised me and the nurses that it would give each of us an apartment. I received financial assistance, and they even offered me the chance to finish my medical training for free.

It doesn't even faze me now, when I read that Tripoli is calling upon the Arab League to lodge protests against our pardon in Bulgaria, and that the parents of the infected children are demanding that we be returned to Libya. They have known for a long time that we are innocent.

But I do want to testify in a case that a Bulgarian attorney is bringing against two of the worst of our Libyan torturers. I hope the nurses will also testify. I plan to fight, even if it takes until the end of my life, to clear our names in the Arab world.

 

Disgusting...

http://thelibyanrevolution.tumblr.com/post/3463251638/many-rape-victims-in-tripoli-last-night

A source from Tripoli has confirmed to us that Al Zawiya Street hospital seen many rape victim admittances last night. Such deplorable and sickening actions were committed after Gaddafi’s speech in which he called for door-to-door cleansing of the city from those who are against his regime.

 

They might but this might not have just been due to that Mubarak is more humane than Gaddafi but that the army abandoned Mubarak while there are still lots of the army backing Gaddafi.

That said given their history Mubarak seems more of a pragmatist than Gaddafi and no where near as volatile.

 

I hate to say it but it could and probably will get worse. While many parts of the military are defecting or joining the protesters there are many loyal to Gaddafi and his family who from my understanding are the best armed and trained members of the military. There are also many mercenaries from other countries in Gaddafi's employ who have no reason to side with the protesters.

One other concern is if Gaddafi is defeated will there be another bloodbath of retribution toward Gaddafi supporters and foreigners who worked for Gaddafi?

I am not a guy who pushes military intervention but with Libya now might be the time to get a UN SC resolution authorizing an intervention into Libya to get rid of Gaddafi and ease Libya's transition before this thing gets bloodier.

 

True many other leaders have followed similar routes.

 

Mercenaries might desert, however, and just get out of Dodge. If I were a mercenary who had no personal interest in Gaddafi staying alive, I'd try to go before a million pissed-off Libyans find me.

I would think UN intervention would be in order. I also wouldn't be too surprised to see Egyptian military aid if they are organized enough to provide it already.

 

I read somewhere online that the base rate for Qaddafi's mercenaries is £18,000 (this is for the black ones from Chad, Sudan, and the DRC). For the Eastern European, Russian, and white South Africans who worked for the Apartheid regimes, the rate is as high £40,000, or about $70k.

That's some serious money for people in the Third World.

 

Be careful with Libyans, make sure you pay them for the plutonium

 

At the minimum there should be a total boycott on Libya.