Libya Roundup, March 19, 2011

Libyan rebels: Gaddafi's forces attacking Benghazi  From The Jerusalem Post.

US claims Libyan gov't violating ceasefire; French UN envoy says military intervention may be launched "hours after" upcoming int'l summit; Gaddafi calls UN resolution "blatant colonialism."
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Large explosions were heard in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi early on Saturday, and residents said that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces were attacking the rebel stronghold.
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A unilateral ceasefire declared on Friday by the Libyan government appeared to have done little to convince outside powers to hold off on plans for air strikes to force an end to an increasingly bloody civil war.



Other regimes emboldened by Gadhafi's tactics
 
..But in the end, it was Gadhafi's willingness to use brute force and the tools of his police state that has helped him so far avoid the fate of neighboring autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt who were swallowed up by popular revolutions.
 
Regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria appear to have taken note, confronting their uprisings with a hard wall of state-sponsored violence.
 
On Friday, government agents fired on a peaceful protest in Yemen, security forces in Syria reportedly shot several demonstrators dead, and Bahrain's ruling monarchy tore down a 300-foot sculpture at Pearl Square, where protesters had been routed in a deadly confrontation just two days earlier.
 
Libya shuts air space in face of strikes
 
Libya shut down its air space on Friday as Britain and France were expected to scramble fighter jets against Moammar Gaddafi's forces after they secured the UN Security Council's blessing.
 
Eurocontrol, the continent's air traffic agency, said Tripoli "does not accept traffic" until further notice, citing information from Maltese authorities, as France announced air strikes would be imminent.
 
Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam said Friday his family was "not afraid" as the Libyan foreign ministry said Tripoli was ready for a ceasefire but wanted to discuss its terms.
 
Meeting Thursday, the UN Security Council voted by 10-0 to permit "all necessary measures" to establish the no-fly zone, protect civilian areas and impose a ceasefire on Gaddafi's military.
 
This paragraph is of long(looonng) term interest..
 
Five countries on the 15-strong council abstained, including permanent members China and Russia, who did not use their veto power. India and Brazil also abstained in addition to Germany.
 
Brazil
Russia
India
China..
 
and
Germany.
 
BRIC plus Germany.  This is not a coincidence.
 
Gadhafi plays deadly war games
 
 Trying to outmaneuver Western military intervention, Moammar Gadhafi's government declared a cease-fire against the rebel uprising faltering against his artillery, tanks and warplanes. The opposition said shells rained down well after the announcement and accused the Libyan leader of lying.
 
Wary of the cease-fire, Britain and France took the lead in plans to enforce a no-fly zone, sending British warplanes to the Mediterranean and announcing a crisis summit today in Paris with the U.N. and Arab allies. In Washington, President Barack Obama ruled out the use of American ground troops but warned that the U.S., which has an array of naval and air forces in the region, would join in military action.
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Parts of eastern Libya, where the once-confident rebels this week found their hold slipping, erupted into celebration at the passage of the U.N. resolution. But the timing and consequences of any international military action remained unclear.
 
Britain, France and NATO held emergency meetings Friday on using military force to enforce the no-fly zone, which was approved by U.N. Security Council on Thursday. Officials announced that the leaders of Britain, France and Germany and the chiefs of the United Nations and Arab League would join other world leaders for the emergency summit on Libya today in Paris.
 
France's ambassador to the United Nations, Gerard Araud, told BBC Newsnight that he expected military action to begin in Libya within hours of the Paris meeting.
 
Libya accuses revolutionaries of breaching truce
 
So far Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Qatar, Spain, Sweden and the United States have said they will help to implement the no-fly zone.
 
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said "everything is ready" to intervene in Libya, but he refused to give a timetable.
And:
Some 300,000 people have already fled Libya since the rebellion began and many more are expected to leave if full-blown war breaks out, the agencies said.
 
EU to back sanctions on Libya oil company next week
 
The European Union will move to add Libya's National Oil Corp. to its list of sanctions against Muammar Gaddafi's government at a summit on March 24/25, EU diplomats said on Friday.
 
The move follows Thursday's U.N. Security Council resolution which authorised a no-fly zone over Libya and expanded sanctions against Gaddafi and his inner circle that were first imposed in February. These measures include an order to freeze the assets of the oil company as well as Libya's central bank.
 
Indict Muammar Gaddafi now for War Crimes in Sierra Leone 
 
With international pressure already mounting on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and with the International Criminal Court now in the process of gathering information on civilian deaths in Libya, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court have a profound opportunity to indict Gaddafi for war crimes and crimes against humanity he has committed in Sierra Leone. The United Nations has already sanctioned Gaddafi’s government, and now it’s time his prior crimes in West Africa are brought to justice, too.


Muammar Gaddafi was the mastermind and key financier of the brutal war that left hundreds of thousands dead in Sierra Leone in West Africa in the 1990s. The war would not have happened in the first place had it not been for the desire of the Libyan leader to punish the government of Sierra Leone for what he regarded as its siding with the West in the 1980’s when Gaddafi was at loggerhead with particularly the United States and Britain. It was also part of Gaddafi’s broader agenda including his geopolitical ambition to destabilize much of West Africa and establish satellite states in the region to be headed by puppet regimes that will be doing his biddings. The decade-long war ripped Sierra Leone apart. Thousands of its victims, whose arms and limbs were chopped off by rebels, were reduced to paupers, roaming the streets as beggars in Freetown and other cities. Children as young as a day old were also among those whose arms and limbs were hacked off by Gaddafi’s rebels. Pregnant women, too, were disemboweled with delight in their display of ghastly brutality.

Libya's 'Love Revolution': Muslim Dating Site Seeds Protest

Sweet..  Gaddafi's thugs were zigging, so naturally, the Libyan people zagged..  Excerpts:

To avoid detection by Libyan secret police, who monitor Facebook and Twitter, Mahmoudi, the leader of the Ekhtalef ("Difference") Movement, used what's considered the Match.com of the Middle East to send coded love letters to rally the revolution.
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So he created a Mawada profile called "Where Is Miriam?" and pretended to be on the hunt for a wife.

The conservative site doesn't allow men to communicate with other men, so other revolutionaries posed as women to contact him, assuming aliases like "Sweet Butterfly," "Opener of the Mountain," "Girl of the Desert" and "Melody of Torture."
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On the site, the revolutionaries used poetry laced with revolutionary references to gauge support and make initial contact. Then they had detailed follow-up conversations via text message and Yahoo Messenger.

Nice.  So far, when the game changes, The People are the ones changing it;  Not The Oppressors.

Mid-East Uprising: Libya Edition

"Libya on the brink."

It's clear Qadafi's regime won't go quietly, and it seems like the tide is turning.. Moammar Gadhafi's son warns of civil war in Libya if father's leadership not recognized Excerpts:

After anti-government unrest spread to the Libyan capital and protesters seized military bases and weapons Sunday, Moammar Gadhafi’s son went on state television to proclaim that his father remained in charge with the army’s backing and would “fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.”
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, in the regime’s first comments on the six days of demonstrations, warned the protesters that they risked igniting a civil war in which Libya’s oil wealth “will be burned.”
The speech followed a fierce crackdown by security forces who fired on thousands of demonstrators and funeral marchers in the eastern city of Benghazi in a bloody cycle of violence that killed 60 people on Sunday alone, according to a doctor in one city hospital. Since the six days of unrest began, more than 200 people have been killed, according to medical officials, human rights groups and exiled dissidents.
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Although the elder Gadhafi did not appear, his son has often been put forward as the regime’s face of reform.
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Protesters had seized some military bases, tanks and other weapons, he said, blaming Islamists, the media, thugs, drunks and drug abusers, foreigners — including Egyptians and Tunisians. (It's amazing the feats drug users are capable of, huh?)
He also admitted that the unrest had spread to Tripoli, with people firing in central Green Square before fleeing.
The rebellion by Libyans frustrated with Gadhafi’s more than 40 years of authoritarian rule has spread to more than a half-dozen eastern cities — but also to Tripoli, where secret police were heavily deployed on the streets of the city of 2 million.
And:
In other setbacks for Gadhafi’s regime, a major tribe in Libya was reported to have turned against him and Libya’s representative to the Arab League said he resigned his post to protest the government’s decision to fire on defiant demonstrators in Benghazi, the second-largest city.
Khaled Abu Bakr, a resident of Sabratha, an ancient Roman city to the west, said protesters besieged the local security headquarters, driving out police and setting it on fire. Abu Bakr said residents are in charge, have set up neighborhood committees to secure their city.
The Internet has been largely shut down, residents can no longer make international calls from land lines and journalists cannot work freely, but eyewitness reports trickling out of the country suggested that protesters were fighting back more forcefully against the Middle East’s longest-serving leader.
“We are not afraid. We won’t turn back,” said a teacher who identified herself only as Omneya. ..“If we don’t continue, this vile man would crush us with his tanks and bulldozers. If we don’t, we won’t ever be free,” she said.

The Renaissance of the Arab World?

It's never good when your country's diplomats resign in disgust..

And finally, is global unrest starting to effect China?