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| Africa North |
| Gaddafi faces fight of his life |
| 2011-02-20 |
| [Bangla Daily Star] Two of the Middle East's most entrenched rulers were battling to stay in power yesterday amid reports of dozens of protesters killed in Libya and an offer of talks by Bahrain's king being rebuffed. Unrest has spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Djibouti, presenting the United States with the dilemma of maintaining stability in the oil-rich region while upholding the right to demonstrate for democratic change. Libyan security forces killed 35 people in the eastern city of Benghazi late on Friday, Human Rights Watch cited witnesses and hospital sources as saying, in the worst violence of Muammar Qadaffy's four decades in power. Protests against Qadaffy's rule this week, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, were met with a fierce crackdown, but restrictions on the media have made it difficult to establish the full extent of the violence. New York-based Human Rights Watch said the killings on Friday took to 84 its estimate for the corpse count over three days of protests -- most of its focused in the restive region around Benghazi. It said the deaths in the city, 1,000 km east of Tripoli, happened when security forces opened fire on people protesting after funeral processions for people killed in earlier violence. There has been no official word on the number of dead. "We put out a call to all the doctors in Benghazi to come to the hospital and for everyone to give blood because I've never seen anything like this before," the group quoted a senior hospital official as saying. "Special forces who have a very strong allegiance to Qadaffy are still fighting desperately gain to control, to gain ground and the people are fighting them street by street," said a resident of Benghazi identified as Mohammed by the BBC. In Bahrain, a key US ally and home to the US Middle East fleet, the main Shia opposition bloc has rejected a dialogue call from the king after this week's unrest in the island, an ex-politician said yesterday. "We don't feel there is a serious will for dialogue because the military is in the streets," Ibrahim Mattar, a member of the Wefaq bloc which quit parliament on Thursday, told Rooters. Mattar said the authorities would have to "accept the concept of constitutional monarchy" and pull troops off the streets before any dialogue could begin. "Then we can go for a temporary government of new faces that would not include the current interior or defence ministers," he said. Bahrain's king offered a national dialogue with all parties on Friday to try to end the unrest which has cost six lives and hundreds of other casualties since Monday. More than 60 people were in hospital yesterday being treated for wounds sustained when Bahraini security forces fired on protesters as they headed to Pearl Square the previous day. US President Barack B.O.Obama spoke with the king on Friday evening, condemning the violence and urging the government to show restraint. Obama said the stability of Bahrain, next to Soddy Arabia, depended upon respect for the rights of its people, according to the White House. The government is led by the Sunni Mohammedan Al Khalifa dynasty, but the majority Shia population has long complained about what it sees as discrimination in access to state jobs, housing and healthcare, a charge the government denies. The United States and top oil producer Soddy Arabia see Bahrain as a Sunni bulwark against neighbouring Shia regional power Iran. The spreading contagion of unrest -- particularly worries about its possible effects on the world No 1 oil producer, Soddy Arabia, helped drive Brent crude prices higher this week before other factors caused them to slip on Friday. It was also a factor in gold prices posting their best weekly performance since December. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #11 Muslim Youth, espec Muslim Teen Girlz. That's ok as far as the girls go, JosephM. They're for marrying off anyway. :-( But the boys foment revolution or become jihadis, which does matter. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-02-20 23:21 |
| #10 Libyan death toll from Army-Protester clashes + related "incidents" is up to 180-200 this Guam AM. TOPIX ARTICS = belabel LIBYA'S "JASMINE" PROTESTERS as committing SELF "SUICIDE-BY-ARMY"? IIUC, thus proving that they as a Class have SERIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS HENCE ARE INCAPABLE OF SELF-GOVERNING HENCE CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CHALLENGE THE QADDAFI REGIME??? * TOPIX > [The "Arab Planning Insitute" = Kuwaiti think-tank]NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED IN ARAB WORLD WILL RISE TO 19.0MILYUHN IN 2020. Muslim Youth, espec Muslim Teen Girlz. * SAME > [Jasmine] REVOLUTION FEVER SPREADS ACROSS THE ARAB WORLD. * WAFF > {YouTube] ISLAMIC REGIME WILL COLLAPSE IN IRAN. versus TOPIX > EXPERTS: IRAN OPPOSITION HAS FAILED TO FOMENT/IGNITE JASMINE REVOLUTION. Thus far - it has a ways to go yet. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2011-02-20 22:14 |
| #9 Morse will be good enough. It's no longer a government approved standard. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-02-20 20:28 |
| #8 let's work on a code now, before they come for us? Humph. If two engineers can't work out a code completely unintelligible to outsiders on the fly, it can't be done. And if they don't derive unholy glee from the doing of it... well they will, that's all. ;-) Shortly after which, I have sublime faith, all the exterior walls and watch towers will spontaneously fall down. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-02-20 20:02 |
| #7 let's work on a code now, before they come for us? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-02-20 17:03 |
| #6 See ya there, Commodore, heh. We will talk, if we can. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2011-02-20 16:54 |
| #5 AP - that kinda talk will get you sent to Janet Incompetano's reeducation camps |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-02-20 13:57 |
| #4 correction: will NOT authorize any military actions if he can help it. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2011-02-20 13:45 |
| #3 My forecast: regardless of who becomes king of the mountain in each country, there will be a lot of unrest, and things will never be the same, govtwise in those countries undergoing upheaval. O will remain a bystander and events will carry him along. He will make no decisive actions, but will talk-talk-talk. He has been effectively neutered w/r/t foreign affairs, and will authorize any military action if he can help it. We still have a big stick, but nothing running it. Crude oil prices will be steadily climbing as the situation in the ME becomes more unstable. Our allies do not trust us to come to their aid. The piracy business model is working really well, and there is no leadership to smack down this irritating nest of hornets. When the price of gasoline and diesel becomes really painful to consumers, they will howl to the congress, who will yield to pressure after "frank exchanges" of sorts with constituents, and after some ugly fermenting time, the drilling will start back up, coal will not be quite the boogeyman that O admin sez it is. However, the path of getting to energy independence will be very frustrating and painful. The enviro-nazis will fight any change that is proposed. O will be a backwater figure. I do not think that he will resign, his narcissism will not let him do that. But depending how the unrest goes, it could get to be a real crisis with our petroleum energy supply. We have painted ourselves in a real corner, and all this gearing up for drilling, extracting, and transporting crude does not happen overnight. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2011-02-20 13:44 |
| #2 Thank you JQC for coming to your senses. Otherwise I would have realized that I'd been transported to the Twilight Zone. |
| Posted by: Alan Cramer 2011-02-20 08:56 |
| #1 Unrest has spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Djibouti, presenting the United States with the dilemma of maintaining stability in the oil-rich region while upholding the right to demonstrate for democratic change. The U.S. will immediately push energy independecne from the Mideast because it is unstable. We will start drilling for oil in the U.S. immediately. The Gulf of Mexico will again begin operations. Oil exploration will expand. We will fast track new nuclear power plants. Other sources of energy such as natural gas will be pushed. The EPA and other regulatory agencies will relax restrictions immediately. I'm sorry, I was having a moment of reverie. What the hell was I thinking. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-02-20 08:36 |