Tyrant Gaddafi Killed!

Gaddafi has been killed in Sirt and theLibyan people at last ae free!

Gaddafi Falls! Seif Arrested!

Last night's push from Libyan rebel forces into Tripoli has met with rousing success and almost no pro-Gaddafi resistance. Seif al-Islam, Gaddafi's notorious son, was arrested, the brigades guarding Gaddafi himself surrendered to the rebels, Gaddafi himself is in direct talks with the head of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul-Jaleel, and the Libyan people are streaming into the streets of Tripoli in celebration. Pro-Gaddafi forces' uniforms are being thrown and trampled in the streets, and the Libyan rebel flag is flying everywhere. Victory for the brave Libyan rebel fighters and victory for freedom and democracy! And huge thanks and victory for NATO in this, their finest hour, and to all the brave supporters of Libya's freedom from the brutal dictator Gaddafi!

The West Needs a New Friggin' Brain

When it comes to the Middle East, the U.S. usually looks like a clueless dwerp. A few well-enacted and clear principles would go far to change that.

1. Human beings are all human. The West tends to think of Arabs as non-human. A sort of mongol race, with a terrorist bent. Think of all the paranoia about the Muslim Brotherhood, as if it's back to its 1950's ascendancy, as if it proposes a return to "the caliphate", GW Bush's touted raison d'etre for the GWOT (war on terror). Think of the cries of "we don't know who these people are!" when considering aid to democracy movements in The Middle East. This is all bullcrap. Drop that load and get real.

2. Freedom and Peace are legitimate goals to defend. Humanity is diminished without them. But... they CANNOT be achieved by FORCE! It must be a willing achievement of the free will of those seeking freedom.

That's why Iraq and Afghanistan failed. We sought to IMPOSE freedom. That's an oxymoron ... moron!

3. In the Arab Spring, our help, no matter how military, is asked for by willing seekers of freedom from oppression. Examples: Libya and Syria.

To compare that to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is either ignorant or political posturing to an ignorant power base or both. Or worse, it could be mean-spirited cynicism appealing to a snarky, nasty power base.

Helping Libya is the same as helping France fight Hitler in WWII. What's in it for us? Our high ground. Freedom is a universal good. Who's gonna defend it? Unarmed civilians?

4. Terrorism cannot be successfully fought as if it's a foreign army with leaders, etc. while ignoring what it is: a freedom-seeking rebellion against oppression. Yes! In this case, seen as superpower-imposed dictatorships and repressive regimes. The latter includes, from the point of view of the Palestinians under their brutal thumb, the state of Israel.

Terrorism is not some sort of pro-caliphate ideology described by George W. Bush. Its idea (in Islamist-style terrorism) is that Islam will make people free from tyranny by non-Muslims. Look at the Palestinians under the Israelis, look at the Arab streets under their dictators. The dictators are all westernized, including the Saudis, whose duplicity is legendary. What could the people be expected to assume??

The only way terrorism could gain a power base of any kind is by the existence of repression that it appears only terrorism could remove. It gained a foothold only as a means to conquer oppression. PERIOD.

Many Arabs and Muslims believe that the word "terrorism" is a ploy invented by repressive regimes - including that of Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians - in order to maintain and excuse their repression. We have clearly seen how Mubarak used the "threat" of terrorism to justify atrocities against his people. Do the people then not have good reason to believe this, O men and women of supposed minds???

5. Israelis are human beings. And therefore responsible for their actions. They are not fetuses. They are not angels. If the Israeli government is a repressive regime to the Palestinians, then how can they tout their "democracy" while denying Palestinians their basic human rights??? The word "security" is the same reason given by ALL midde eastern dictators for their repression. Are we not then supporters of oppression? Are not taxpayer dollars lavished on oppression? Then what is meant by "freedom-loving"??

6. The naming of groups of people as "terrorists" and thus justifying all manner of torture, murder, repression, abdication of human rights and principles CANNOT be a path to freedom or democracy. It is immoral, unjust, hateful, hypocritical, is itself oppression and repression, and destroys everything we claim to uphold as principle.

Without principles and a high ground, what exactly the hell are we???

Note to the U.S.: The View from the Arab Street

When the U.S. and the West wallows in heartfelt indecision on Libya, and decisive ambivalence about Mideast democratic revolutions in general, it sends a clear message to the Arab "Street" - as opposed to the Arab "throne", from which emanate winks, nods, and solemn, secret applause. The message is that the U.S., and the West,
WANT, NEED, tyrants in the Middle East. The U.S. and NATO want to avoid "instability". They can't "interfere" in "civil wars". The West will help with "humanitarian efforts" - the band-aids. But to get at the cause??? Well, everybody loves a tyrant!

Arabs on the Street see the West has adopted their much-loved "domino theory". If one tyrant goes, others could fall. And the U.S., apparently, NEEDS tyrants.

Oh yes, we condemned Qaddafi. Reagan even tried to assassinate him back in the day. And we have no problem with regime change, assassination, fomenting civil wars in other countries, or even occupying them. Just look at Iraq, and don't forget Vietnam. But Libya?? Heavens, no!

Why? Simple. We're not calling the shots. We didn't start the revolt. Libyans did. Therein lies the issue, the trigger-finger block. We loathe any revolution that wasn't, shall we say, "made in the U.S.A." If it wasn't our idea, to tell with it.

But...let's look more closely at this domino theory. We're not talking about nations falling to communist revolutions. We're talking about repressive regimes falling to democratic revolutions, about fights for freedom, democracy and representative government - the West's rhetorical ideals. We're talking about the very sorts of revolutions we've been blaming the Arabs for not having for decades, the lack of which has been brought out ad nauseum as proof of Arabs' "backwardness" and lack of "readiness for democracy". And now, here's your true-blood, liberal, Western-style revolt! These are not Islamists. They want a real, free democracy. They want out of dictatorships.

Yet the West gives credence to the worst of all regimes, buying into Qaddafi's "civil war" story, buying into his propaganda that his people "love" him. The West doesn't quibble with this, presumes - for their own convenience - that he has loyalists who have not been bought or terrorized into submission, and that these loyalists are fighting for what they conceive of as a legitimate cause.

The U.S. backed Mubarak until it became openly hideous to do so, and now backs Qaddafi by allowing him to decimate his population and call it a "civil war" instead of a massacre. It seems the U.S. is also trying to shore of Yemen's Ali Saleh, and OMG don't mention the Saudi regime - now there's one hell of a repressive regime if there ever was one! Let alone...please don't say it... the unmentionable, the sacred, the fetus-in-a-jar...Israel. (When Israel openly supports fellow democracies in the region instead of trying to decimate them in some way as per Lebanon, I'll stop calling it a fetus. A democracy that doesn't support democracy is not a democracy, but some kind of hybrid. Is the US trying to rebrand itself, too?)

So what is the Arab on the street to presume? That the West loves democracy? That they believe in human rights and freedom? Or that they only impose, by force of arms, "freedom" when it suits their needs, when they are in full control of that freedom. But isn't "freedom under someone's control" an oxymoron???

Massacre Is Not Civil War: The West Buys Into Qaddafi's Paradigms

A pathologically insane tyrant and his pathological tyrant sons are massacring their civilian populations with total impunity as the West engages in its usual lap-dancing, hypocritical vacillations. It's not that anyone actually likes Qaddafi. It's not that people are not disgusted by his massacre of Libyans in Zawiya and elsewhere or by Qaddafi's and his sons' obvious lies and cover ups. It's that the West basically doesn't give a damn.

Obama doesn't know what he's doing. Most of Europe doesn't give a damn. Cameron wants to look like he gives a damn, but he doesn't really...and so on...So why? Why don't the deaths of civilians being crushed by heavily armed troops inspire enough rage? Why are Libyans being categorized in Qaddafi's terms as "rebels" instead of as protesters forced to become fighters with no experience, weapons or training? Why does the West buy into Qaddafi's "rebel" and "civil war" line instead of calling them wheat they are - civilians who began what was conceived as a non-violent protest against the brutal Qaddafi regime modeled after the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions?

When more and more Libyans joined the once-peaceful revolution, Qaddafi decided to call it a "civil war" and threatened via Seif - his son-turned-War-Pimp - that there would be "blood in the streets." He made good on his promise and massacred unarmed civilians by armed troops from air, land, sea, and close range, calling it "civil war". Now NATO says they can't take action because this is a civil war and they don't "interfere" in civil wars.

Yes, the U.S., NATO, the EU, the West all buy Qaddafi's repackaging of violence. It's not a modern weaponized and mechanized armed force decimating its civilian population to keep them under a madman's repressive tyranny. No, it's a "civil war" with two sides: "the government" vs. "the rebels". But those are not "rebels" and never were. They are civilians who are fighting for their own freedom, for their lives, for their own country on their own land, for the democracy so touted in Western rhetoric. But Qaddafi, whose personal life centers on women, sex, and drugs (he's obviously strung out on drugs most of the time), will kill every man, woman and child in Libya who opposes him to keep the power and money he pathologically craves. He is hell-bent on holding the reins of his psychopathocracy and will stop at nothing. Slaughter is child's play to him. And as for his so-called devoted "people" - Apparently, no one noticed the protests in his so-called "stronghold", Tripoli, which he crushed by nothing less than all-out slaughter, coupled with fear tactics and propaganda. If he has so much "support", why does he have to bribe them? Why does he need to important foreign nationals to fight for him? So to adopt his "civil war" line is itself crazy.

Is NATO crazy? Is Obama crazy? No. But there's a sense of fear of getting mired in this, and there's political liability. There's no self-interest in backing the Libyan people, at least not in the Machiavellian sense. If he stays, the West gets oil. If he leaves, they get oil. So what's the diff? And Qaddafi knows this. He knows the West is all talk, no action. Qaddafi says when it comes to oil, Libya is important. When it comes to human rights and crimes against humanity, Libya is unimportant. The West has clearly bought into this and is currently acting on it. This plays directly into his regime.

The Generals say we need weeks, months, and the "rebels" will lose. Note: not "get slaughtered", no - "lose". We just can't take action like that in a civil war, they say. But these are Qaddafi's words.

Who said this was a civil war? Qaddafi. Who proclaimed there will be a civil war? Qaddafi. Who said when it comes to freedom, de,ocracy and human rights, Libya is unimportant? Qaddafi.

And who are happily mouthing Qaddafi's words, using his terminology, his repackaging of horrific massacre into another entirely different "internal struggle" scenario? Who are choosing when Libya is important or unimportant exactly and solely based on Qaddafi's own set conditions?

NATO. America. The West.

Now tell me - who is calling the shots? Who sets the agenda here?

And the Libyan people's hope for democracy? Their faith in Western nations' willingness to support the cause of freedom? They were hoping for Western leadership, moral backbone. Good luck with that.

Total Joy! Mubarak Finally Steps Down - Democracy for Egypt!!

The Torturer and Veep of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, announced that Hosny Mubarak will vacate his presidency and the army will supervise a secure and orderly transition of power while Gen. Tantawi will be the de facto president. After 18 days of protests, after 80,000 protesters marched on the presidential palace, after the most amazing showing of people power on the face of the planet, Egypt is at last a free country. Now the path to democracy, the effort that requires, begins.

Links:
al-jazeera english:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011211164636605699.html

bbc

Mubarak Attacks Protesters with Thugs, Dogs, Weapons

Embattled Egyptian dictator Hosny Mubarak played his usual game: attacking peaceful civilians and citizens with paid thugs and secret police, both posing as civilians and in this case, as "pro-Mubarak protesters".

For those journalists who worry that these could be genuine citizens who want Mubarak in power, let this be proof to their cluelessness: those "pro-Mubarak protesters" were all armed. They were mostly paid goons, thugs who were sent by the Ministry of Interior to drive the protestors out with violence, and "support" Mubarak's ruthless dictatorship with violence.

Thousands - by Egypt's Health Ministry estimate, 5,000, but probably more - were injured, some critically, and at least five were killed. Chaos erupted in the streets. Some of the goons arrived, ploughing through the crowd on horseback and camelback, some cracking whips. Brave protesters pulled them off their horses/camels, and subdued them, turning some to the army, but keeping most of the attackers in a makeshift detention area in Tahrir Square.

There was also a concerted effort by Mubarak and his goons to attack journalists, as well as anyone who "looked foreign". Anderson Cooper of CNN was one of the more prominent victims of this violence, though he returned to the air later from an undisclosed "safe" location in Cairo (presumably). As many as 26 (or more) journalists were either beaten up or detained, hooded and interrogated in unknown locations. Protesters took down the license plate number of a car from which an official-looking individual was seen paying money to some of the thugs that had been violent with pro-Democracy protesters.

This is clearly a case of peaceful pro-Democracy protestors who want an end to the brutal dictatorship being roughed up and threatened by dictator Mubarak. It also shows that he wants to brutalize his people without journalists reporting it. It is also a sign that Mubarak wants to show off to the West his anger at their abandonment of his repressive regime (in calling for reform, to step down, etc.) after years of his being their man in the middle east, doing favors for them, clamping down on Muslims in the so-called War on Terror, and torturing terror suspects for the West. In other words, he's angry that the West is now abandoning their pet goon.

But the protestors have retaken Tahrir Square, pushed out the goons, and set up hospital areas to treat the wounded, and responded to the situation in the most admirable, civilized, and cooperative way. This bodes well for Egypt.

But the battle for Egypt has just begun. The pro-Democracy movement in the streets will not back down, saying they will die for their freedom and that of their children. Mubarak says he will not step down or there will be chaos. It's obvious now to the world that the only chaos is coming from his side.

Victory to democracy in Egypt. It is and will be a model of liberty for the world.

Conceived in Liberty: Egypt vs. The Tyrant

The end of acquiescence is the beginning of freedom.

Today, Egyptians demonstrated - from 20,000 to 100,000 strong - in Cairo, Tanta, Alexandria, Asiut - against Hosny Mubarak, the draconian Oppressor of the Egyptian people - who are not "his" people since he considers them his enemies (!). The force of sheer human will towards freedom has been unleashed in Egypt.

And met with Mubarak's domestic "policy": a wall of brute, black-helmeted, robotic, ironclad police who arrived in armored caravans and pressed, with US-trained professional brutality, against the life-force of youth, of their own country, their own youth rebelling to finally, after generations of complacency and soul-killing, despairing acquiescence, stand and march as human beings for the right to breathe, to walk freely in their own streets, to speak freely in their own nation on their own ground, to not be tortured or killed or imprisoned or see family members disappear - for simply speaking, thinking, or walking in a group of three.


There is no faith or motive in despair. but once despair is removed, what power can be unleashed! Fear is irrelevant in challenging such abominable tyranny as Mubarak's criminal regime. Partisanship dissolves. Even religious differences collapse. All Egyptians own their country and they will wrest it forcibly, by the force of thousands growing quickly to millions, from the tyrant and his cronies. All Egyptians are Hosny's victims. Look at those riot police. They are his victims, too. They are often forced by need, by poverty into protecting the very regime that imprisons them and their families, their own nation, in a hopeless, pointless, world without freedom.

Yes, the police. Look at what they must do to themselves to turn against their own sons and daughters in the streets. They must kill their own conscience, lie and cover up for what they know is true. But they cannot be freed from these shackles until the movement gains more power, momentum, and sheer numbers.

The defiance and brashness of protestors is life, invigorating and despair-crushing, death-defying, liberating. But this force needs thousands and the thousands need millions. It needs to grow to overwhelming numbers to create inevitability. The demonstrators must know, not merely hope, believe, but know that their cause - the complete and permanent ouster and overthrow of Mubarak, his family and his cronies is inevitable, will happen, as a consequence of this force of human will on its determined, shared, cooperating trajectory toward freedom. But to make this happen NOW, that is, SOON, requires non-stop, unrelenting action!

Action day after day, week after week, whatever it takes as long as it takes, unrelenting, never giving up, no matter if it takes lives, deaths. The police WILL lose their stomach when it comes to mass murder. Remember, they have families, They are Egyptians. They have very weak and trembling excuses for being on the side of oppression and very powerful urges to break free just as the youth in the street do. But they need to feel the inevitability, the necessity, the massive power of great numbers of fellow countrymen, to lay down their arms and join the force of their own people.

Mubarak's only self-defense will be a call for "security" and "stability". This has been his sole measly, transparently empty excuse for imposing martial law over 3 decades and counting. How worthless is this excuse? How valuable is being a human being with free will? What life can be secured when life without freedom has no taste of life, when faith under oppression cannot be faith, when love under tyranny cannot grow, when under the banner of security and stability the reason to live and to even exist is crushed??

All Egyptians must put pressure on that very security and stability. Make Egypt insecure. Destabilize the streets. Close the shops. Refuse to show up for normalcy. Don't participate in normal daily life (if that's what it even was). Make the streets a place not of commerce and entertainment, not of peace and quiet, not of normal traffic, but a place of revolution. Make the streets the birthplace of liberty. Force liberty out of the streets and the tyrant out of his power-vault.


Make the streets a place where nothing is what it was before. Shops do not sell. Shelters do not shelter. Pedestrians do not mill aimlessly. Everyone is out in the streets in their unarmed bare clothing, more people than can possibly ever be arrested, all marching in one direction, one force, calling in one voice and many voices for the ouster of the tyrant.

Make the streets for Mubarak what Mubarak made them for the people: a place controlled by force. But this time, the force of all Egyptians, young and old, men and women, employed and unemployed, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, Muslims and Christians, impoverished and people of means, all moving in one direction calling for the demise of the tyrant Mubarak.

When the police can no longer control the crowds, when the media no longer can suppress the news, when the tyrant no longer can sleep in his vault, when the army no longer can pretend they despise freedom, when the police find their own families and neighborhoods marching in the force towards long-desired liberty, who - I say, who? - imagines that any outcome is more inevitable than what God has ordained and promised - complete and irreversible victory over tyranny and the demise of the tyrant Mubarak???!!!

The Smell of Revolution

Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" was more coffee than perfume - a sign of morning, beginnings, waking up. And smell is the most penetrating, intangible, evocative of senses. It feels almost unreal. You can't hold it, suppress it, drive it away. It is the cumulative force of masses of people rising up, self-motivated, determined, as a wall of uncompromising resistance. This pungent, irresistible smell aroused latent rebellious urges in the masses of Arabs who live undeer the most draconian and fervent oppressions and tyrannies. The Jasmine Revolution is the aphrodisiac of freedom grasped by force of desire and will power shared as a wall of mass, spontaneous rebellion. Who will be inspired by it? Millions. Who will take action?
That...depends.

The Western media categorizes the threat to Arab regimes as "North African", specifying Libya, Algeria, and Egypt. Morocco doesn't play well into this, since Mohammad VI has managed to ease authoritarian rule and give a strong impression of freedom-to-be-released from its cage. But the others are ripe for picking. Overripe, one could say.

Going further east, one shouldn't ignore the totalitarian regimes in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan - and while we're at it, the Gulf States (although like Morocco, they are liberalized to the point of losing that draconian dictatorship vibe).

All these countries have large populations under varying degrees of oppression - notably large populations of unemployed youth, the very group that spearheaded the Jasmine Revolution. Youth unemployment is a huge problem in the Arab world - for example, Saudi Arabia. But will they revolt? There's a strong tradition of top-down authoritarianism that dominates the thinking of many young Saudis, especially the zealots for whom religion is a prime motivator. The reason is not Islam - contrary to popular (Western) opinion, it's very pro-democratic - nor Arab culture - no Pharaohs in that tradition either. Rather, it's the Wahhabi tendency to micromanage people's lives that created a culture of behavioral policing that in turn lends to totalitarian policies and practices. This itself makes a Saudi revolution implausible, as a micromanaged crowd cannot rise up in a focused, forceful way.

Syria's and Jordan's leaders managed to give off a bungling, human, reasonable vibe that makes them not so easy to universally despise. Masses need to unite with rage. And a human face on the leader diminishes that rage in many. As for Libya's Gaddafi, in spite of his people's contempt for him, he manages to appear less self-indulgent and authoritarian than just a wild and crazy guy. So we're left with Egypt and Algeria as the most likely countries to smell the coffee.

Egypt is the place where that pungent smell should - and will - resonate most. Mubarak is universally despised. His cronies have proven themselves as positively evil - raping and torturing opponents, humiliating and ignoring huge parts of the population. The gap between rich and poor is both vast and also humiliating. The poor barely survive. Education is a joke. Housing is ad hoc. The government is a bureaucracy of bribes and bribes alone. Nothing is as it seems or as it is officially claimed to be. Government officials cannot live off salaries, but must - no real alternative is there - live off bribes. Corruption is so rampant - for years! - that there is no meaning to the word "government" or in fact most of the words used for public display.

Mubarak himself has no domestic policy whatsoever. He leaves that to a brutal police trained in suppression, oppression, draconian rule, and crowd control methods that would shock the world had they been ussed on, noty animals, but insects. Thye individual Egyptian does not even register on the government's radar as a cypher. He/she is nothing, below nothing, a creature without meaning or value who still poses a potential threat - and therefore is an enemy - to Mubarak and his ruling class - a small elite so deprived of moral values that they would be better replaced by robots who at least may run on logic.

Mubarak's sole interest is foreign policy. By appearing with foreign leaders, he creates the impression of being a leader, doing great things, having a job, not being what he really is: a gigantic, monstrous obstacle to human life, success, hope, faith, survival, health, or any semblance of humanity for millions of people.

It is illegal in Egypt for more than two people to walk together. Mubarak's prime minister, Nazif, claimed repeatedly, including in an interview with Charlie Rose, that the Egyptian people are not ready for democracy. He lied. Only he, and his master's voice, the wizard of Toz (which in Arabic means "so what" or "to hell with it"), Mubarak.

Of all places in the world, Egypt needs to smell the revolution, to wake up, to stop the fear, to rise up as one mass, to forget about death. Is death really worse than this desperation-without-purpose that passes for life? And to stand en masse, as one gigantic, irrepressible, eloquent, unbeatable, recalcitrant, immoveable force forging at last their own will, freedom to be, once again, at least, people, human, not caged and bused and humiliated animals.

It is time to forget the fear of loss, of being attacked. If the force gains enough momentum, police and media will turn against the evil dictator and help that force to force him out - him and his collaborators - in shame. This is a moment to sieze now - not let dissipate. The coffee's in the air. The perfume, the aphrodisiac of liberty wafts far and wide. The quarry quivers, has not yet bolstered his defenses, is afraid. Now is the moment - THE MOMENT - to make Mubarak's fears realized, to bring his worst nightmares to life, as he brought his peoples' worst nightmares to life and extended them to the forseeable future.

Now is the moment to have a future, to give children a future. For life under oppression is not life. Faith under oppression is not faith. Love under oppression is not love. Hope under oppression is not hope.

Do not wait for a plan, a leader, an army. The plan is to rise up, all without exception, and each man, woman, and child is a leader when they join the force of revolution and rebellion against the evil that is Mubarak. The only force that can destroy such uncompromising evil. The smell of revolution will blow and it will either reach people's hearts and minds, or fall to the ground, lost forever. It is a choice. and the wrong choice is an unacceptable disaster.

One cannot do it alone. Neighbors, neighborhoods, whole swaths of people, a whole nation rising up with one voice is a force even a brutal dictator like Mubarak cannot fight. Think of the day after - a day when Mubarak flees with his family and cronies never to return. Can there be any greater, unmitigated joy, shared by millions, than that?