#5
Since there is NO legal precedent for a President refusing to abide by an election in this country, he would probably be arrested by part of the SS's Presidential Detail if he refused to vacate the White House.
[Asharq al-Aswat] At the time of writing, the Colonel [Muammar Qadaffy] is teetering on the point of collapse (both his regime, and himself!) He remains in a state of delirium, trying to justify or explain what has happened. Sometimes he describes what happened as a plot by "rats who had been drugged with hallucinatory pills", and other times brands them as adherers or followers of Osama Bin Laden. This, along with other insults, is how he describes his Libyan people, who staged a popular uprising to revolt and demand their right to live in dignity and justice, and to end despotism and corruption.
Libya was previously ruled by an old, virtuous, but ultimately weak king, Idris al-Senousi. When a disillusioned mob revolted against him, calling for his overthrow, they chanted "We'd rather be ruled by the Devil than by Idris." It seemed that heaven responded to such a desire, and along came Qadaffy.
Muammar Qadaffy is effectively applying the reverse of all his slogans in the Green Book. By his own hands, and by means of tyranny, he is crushing the desires of his people, who have staged a genuine popular uprising, rather than dubious coup d'état [as Qadaffy did]. Libya was previously ruled by an old, virtuous, but ultimately weak king, Idris al-Senousi. When a disillusioned mob revolted against him, calling for his overthrow, they chanted "We'd rather be ruled by the Devil than by Idris." It seemed that heaven responded to such a desire, and along came Qadaffy. Whereas the famous Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi once wrote:
If, one day, the people desire to live, then fate will answer their call.
It seems we can apply the reverse to Qadaffy:
If, one day, the people desire to die, then Muammar will answer their call!
--"Life's Will", Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi
Muammar Qadaffy is a crime in himself, which was criminal masterminded by multiple parties. Qadaffy was brought to the limelight by President Jamal Abdul-Nasser, who took him under his wing, and provided him with legitimacy. Later on, we saw a greatly hypocritical relationship, founded on mutual interests, between Qadaffy and Western countries, who turned a blind eye towards his activities, as long as Libya continued to supply them with oil. Only two political figures tried to get rid of him, and punish him by means of force, namely [late Egyptian President] Anwar al-Sadat and Ronald Reagan, each having their own reasons.
Qadaffy's relations with the West continued to ebb and flow until the year 2003. Shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Muammar Qadaffy bowed deeply to the West, relinquishing his program to produce weapons of mass destruction, which he claimed to have been developing. Later on, he signed a number of protocol agreements with Western states, and this was crowned by the visit of the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He went on to meet with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and subsequently his successor, Gordon Brown. ... the hapless former British PM ... Qadaffy's relationship with Tony Blair became stronger after the latter left office, and this contributed to the release of Libyan defendant Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was imprisoned in Scotland.
Furthermore, Qadaffy's relations with Italy improved enormously, to the extent that Italy became Libya's major economic and investment partner. During that period, the Libyan government hired the American "Livingston Group", a highly influential lobby in the US, and "White & Case", a renowned legal consultancy bureau, in addition to a variety of public relation firms, with the aim of improving Libya's image in Western public opinion. This prompted the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to meet with Qadaffy's son Motasem, and they held a joint presser to boast of America's improved relations with Libya. At the same time, oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Halliburton, Total, and BP gained extraordinary benefits from lucrative oil contracts in the North African state.
The Libyan regime is now on its last breath, and still some seek to prolong its stay of execution, contributing further to the torture that the Libyan nation has suffered throughout this agonizing period.
In the meantime, people in Tunisia and Egypt are concerned that their revolution may be hijacked. People are casting doubts about the current interim governments in both countries; their relations with the old regimes, and the presence of key figures from previous ruling parties. These ruling parties were a major reason behind the popular rage and the subsequent revolutions in the first place. The achievement of the revolution was highly significant, but the management of the post-revolution period is no less important, in order to complete the process, and ensure that no one can hijack the achievement, or destroy this newfound hope.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/02/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
This must be resolved the Arab way. Like in Lawrence of Arabia the argument will be at the end on whose flag will fly on the waterworks. Then the old ways of doing things will return. The dirty work of politicians.
Ann Althouse Prof. Althouse and her husband Meade live in Madison and have been posting photos and YouTube videos of the protests for several weeks. She observes that
...as the protest drags on and protesters are sleep-deprived and frustrated and tired of nothing happening but standing around chanting and listening to drum-beating for hours on end, logic and proportion is flopping away. There was some serious aggression yesterday. Let's go to the tape, as they say:
There's very tense confrontation, and it flips into paranoia and incoherence. At 4:35, you hear a woman say, "Are you a plant?" At 4:57: "I think we know you're a Walker plant?" At 5:00: "You [are a Walker plant] on this gathering and we can tell." At 5:17, a large man barges into Meade and grabs the Flip camera, and actually gets it out of Meade's hand. No one in the crowd does anything to help Meade in this assault, and Meade grabs the man's arm and wrests the camera out of his hand. This man says "Get your hands off me," as if he's a victim....
I see some people descending into irrationality beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders. Meade was at a demonstration, photographing it. A demonstration is to a clear-thinking person a collection of people asking to be seen, wanting to be photographed. Yet when they perceive that Meade isn't one of them they flip it's a Flip camera into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who's finding out what's going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their "plant" theory. And it's not just a theory. They know he's a plant.
But he's not a plant. He's a human being. An individual human being. And so are all the protesters, but I fear they are losing their grip on that reality.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/02/2011 13:39 ||
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It's not sleep deprivation, it's knowing what cops (unionized public workers) will look the other way.
#3
I've never been a fan of any unions, as I think they're basically commie scum. And uh, these morons, aren't exactly changing my opinion.
I'd like to see them all fired, that's callous I know, but that's just how I roll.
Posted by: Jefferson ||
03/02/2011 14:22 Comments ||
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#4
Losing grip? They had a grip?
Seriously, unions are a 19th century solution to a 19th century problem. And since when does collective "bargaining" mean "violence"? But it gets even better. These are government employees using violence against elected officials, and by extension, the taxpayers they work for. Please remind me what we call violence against the government? What was that word?
#5
There's another post here which shows still images of some of the same people. There's Whistleblower in the cardboard sign, the Walkerwomen, and the Creepy Grandma in the purple coat and the Solidarity sign.
It starts getting interesting (i.e. loud) at about 4:50. At around 5:15 The Enforcer shows up. At 5:24 he grabs the camera. At 6:54 the Whisteblower turns and you can see the Dept. of Corrections patch on his shoulder. At 7:24 the Grandma of Death toddles up to tell Meade that "You are a person against all of us. The whole nation is looking at you."
#6
I think the unions would ultimately win their case through public support - if they could behave. But no, they act like thugs and pigs; when they trash the Capitol they show their colors and a lot of decent, sympathetic people turn away (no doubt a number of them are union members who turn away in shame.)
#7
The problem with thugs is that they have no discipline. When something really nasty happens you'll see the usual senior suspects arguing that they can't be held responsible blah, blah, blah. Well, if you can't control them, you can't represent them either. And if you can't control them, then what happens to them is their own comeuppance.
BTW, the police union members had better talk to their National Guard people about their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where they witnessed the behavior of local police who had to go home every night in to the community. Seems that some of that ineffectiveness and 'looking the other way' had something to do with being able to physically go back to work the next shift. Unless your going to establish barracks and walled communities for your union brethren to live in, being isolated in the open community grants you no protection.
#9
Union members are knuckle draggers. They don't have the intelligence to make it in life on thier own. Laziness, mental and physical, ignorance, pride of what? Union is another name for a pack of wild animals that suck the blood out of something until it is dead.
America vows not to meddle on behalf of Iranian dissidents, reaches out to Syria, and was initially silent in the face of Libyan atrocities in a landscape in which we earlier declared Hosni Mubarak a dictator, and not a dictator, who should depart kinda yesterday, if he did not stay on for a transition to a military dictatorship, which might in turn oversee elections some day that might include the Muslim Brotherhood, which is sorta nonviolent and kinda secular.
In the last two years scarcely a week has gone by in which we did not in some way criticize democratic and once allied Israel. Perhaps if the Israeli government had stoned some homosexuals, or assassinated a leading Lebanese reform figure, or bombed its own cities, we might either have kept silent or publicly promised not to meddle in Israeli affairs. Or we might have apologized for something we purportedly did decades ago that offended Israeli sensibilities.
#2
Are we abdicating or are we transferring responsibilities to other who've road the military welfare of the US for over half a century by forcing them to protect their shipping, their commerce, their interests.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Gordon Brown.
