Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe idea never was to bomb Gaddafi into submission. The military action has been designed to make sure he does not unleash animal brutality upon peaceful protesters. Otherwise there were mass protests already in Tripoli. Once Gaddafi has been neutralized, the thing for the Libyan opposition to do is to organize peaceful protests all over again, with the international community standing by. Could you bring a hundred thousand people out into the streets of Tripoli? That is the question. The idea is not for the Libyan opposition to outgun Gaddafi's forces. That never was the idea. The idea always was to win through nonviolent methods.
Come out into the streets all over again. Do it again in Benghazi. Organize peaceful marches in support of democracy. Do that is cities all across Libya. Finally do it in Tripoli. Gaddafi has to go. That is the only acceptable outcome.
Days of military action followed by a few weeks of nonviolent street action. That is the recipe for success. Image by Getty Images via @daylife
And if Gaddafi performs a repeat and unleashes animal brutality upon those peaceful protesters, take him out. Sometimes you don't get to take the criminal to court. He gets gunned down because he decided to fight to the end.
Tunisia was a warm up act. Egypt was a warm up act. Libya is a warm up act. Yemen, and Bahrain will be warm up acts. Saudi Arabia will be a warm up act, as Syria and Jordan. Morocco, Qatar, United Arab Emirates. They all will be warm up acts.
And then Iran will wake up all over again. All this is in preparation for Iran. Because that is where it all started. The people of Iran woke up in 2009. And we are reaping the rewards today in all these other countries.
But the final push has to be made in Iran itself. The mullahs are unpleasant people. They need to go.
New York Times: In Syria, Crackdown After Protests: Protests broke out in four Syrian cities on Friday, the first large-scale demonstrations here since the pro-democracy uprisings began in the Arab world three months ago. Brutal police crackdowns followed, leaving six people dead and scores injured..... In the largest protests, several thousand people gathered in the center of Dara’a, in southern Syria, chanting “God, Syria and freedom only” ..... A Facebook page, “the Syrian revolution 2011,” has called on people to protest against corruption and repression. ..... Small protests in the capital on Tuesday and Wednesday were violently dispersed by the authorities, who arrested scores of demonstrators. The state news service, SANA, dismissed those protests as the work of outside agitators. ..... about 20 youths who had written graffiti complaining about the high cost of living and calling for more freedoms...... “They used live ammunition immediately, no tear gas or anything else”
Democracy in Syria, as in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia or Libya, or in Iran, is not Britain's business, it is not the business of France, it is most definitely not the business of the United States of America. But when the people rise and take to the streets to peacefully protest, if any actor, any entity, any apparatus, any organization, any state structure, or mafia group, or a terrorist group, or a clan, or royal family, or an army, or a police force decides to unleash animal brutality upon those peaceful protesters, not just the US or Britain or France, but the entire community of nations on the planet has to stand up for them, and there are many, many nonviolent options. You impose global travel bans on all members of the regime, you freeze their assets, you issue strict warnings of vocal support, you extend moral support, you offer logistical support, maybe they need a few laptops, a few camera phones, medical supplies perhaps, and you give the offenders a little time, all the time making it absolutely clear unleashing animal brutality is not acceptable, and of course you press charges against them in the International Criminal Court, and you issue Interpol warrants for their arrests. And if they don't stop still, then you go to the UN Security Council for the final act. That final act still fits the definition of non violence. The violence against Hitler's regime fit the definition of non violence.
Or some monarchs in the region could do the smart thing and not unleash animal brutality upon their people and request that they be turned into constitutional monarchs. That is a legitimate option. But that is not an option still on the table after you have unleashed animal brutality upon peaceful protesters.
Image by US Army Korea - IMCOM via FlickrGaddafi not only did not respect the UN Security Council resolution, he lied about it first, then openly came out not only defying it, but also went on to threaten Europe. Attacking his troops that have encircled Benghazi is not sufficient. Because the orders are not coming from the outskirts of Benghazi. The orders for those military acts are coming from Tripoli. It is fundamentally important to destroy the command and control centers that are based in Tripoli. All that infrastructure that makes it possible for Gaddafi to make his ground maneuvers have to be destroyed.
The no fly zone has been announced. If Gaddafi continues to fly planes, shoot them down. Bomb the airports that those planes came out of. Bomb the air bases. Bomb the control towers. Bomb the command center in Tripoli.
If you only bomb the planes in the sky, you are agreeing to play the cat and mouse game that Gaddafi wants to play with you. When he announced a ceasefire he lied. That was his way of saying just give me 48 more hours, and I will have Benghazi by then. Then there would be nothing for you to do.
This dude is not going to do the ceasefire thing. It is the nature of the beast. Image by Abode of Chaos via Flickr
You bomb the planes in the sky. And if there are reports - as there are - that he has, if anything, accelerated military action on the ground, then that would be a clear signal that he has not understood the concept of the no fly zone. The concept is to protect Libyan civilians. If he continues to attack civilians, you look for all movements on the ground by the Gaddafi forces, and you conduct aerial strikes upon them. There are open roads that his forces use. They are not hard to find. These are not exactly the jungles of Vietnam. There is nowhere to hide. This is a freaking desert. There are open skies.
But if there is action on the ground on his part, you attack his military establishments in Tripoli. You hit the core of his military organization. You hit the presidential palace, because that is where the orders are coming from.
All this until all military action on his part ceases, not very likely. Instead the guy is threatening to go into a whole different direction. He is threatening military action against France.
It is like this. A criminal with a gun is on rampage at a department store. The police decide to take action. When he is finally surrounded and it is decided gunning him down is the only way to end the rampage, he sends a message that he is going to come next for the police station - maybe he will blow up the building - if the police try to gun him down.
Do you weigh his words? Do you want to think if it is worth taking the chances? Or do you get further confirmed in your suspicious that what you are facing is a criminal?
Gaddafi has done what Bin Laden did not do. At least Bin Laden went into hiding before he started issuing his tireless fatwas. Gaddafi is issuing his threats against entire countries and he is doing it without going into hiding.
This guy is not the president of Libya. He has no formal title. By his own admission he has no claim to any kind of representation to Libyan sovereignty. This guy is a criminal first, last and foremost.
It is not Al Qaeda that took over Benghazi. The people who took over Benghazi are people who aspire to turn Libya into a modern democracy. I wish that upon all Arab countries.
The uprising in Benghazi was not violent. Gaddafi's army units in Benghazi defected. Can't blame them. Image by BlatantNews.com via Flickr
The way this drama is going to end is this guy Gaddafi is going to commit suicide. As days have passed, he has become even less and less compromising. That is a warning sign. My judgment is he will kill as many people as possible before he will kill himself.
Exile is no longer an option for him. He has killed too many people. If he is captured alive, he gets to go to the International Criminal Court. But I doubt he will want to get captured alive.
The choice is between putting the mad dog to sleep and letting him kill a few thousand more people before he kills himself.
I wish it were otherwise. I wish he would do the ceasefire thing. That there would be no more attacks on civilians anywhere in Libya. Then the people of Libya would have the option to protest peacefully or keep him as their leader.
The international community does not have a democracy agenda. It is the Libyan people who have a democracy agenda. Liberty rings from within the human heart.
Image via WikipediaThe road map for Libya also has to be the road map for Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. It is not for the United States to urge people into the streets, but when they do come out to peacefully protest no regime anywhere should feel it is okay for them to unleash animal brutality upon those peaceful protesters.
Just because Yemen is a small country, just because Bahrain is a small country does not mean we can afford to ignore them. We encircle Saudi Arabia by doing right in Yemen and Bahrain. Freezing the global assets of repressive elites and imposing travel bans on them is where you start. Then you issue interpol warrants authorized by the International Criminal Court. Then you threaten surgical aerial strikes.
The message has to be clear. You do not get to unleash animal brutality upon a peacefully protesting people. You can refuse to accept their demands. You can negotiate with them. But you do not get to unleash animal brutality. Not in this day and age. Not in this century.
This is all about building momentum. Tunisia was about Egypt. Egypt was about Libya. Libya is about Saudi Arabia. Yemen and Bahrain are about Saudi Arabia. And the entire Arab world is about China and Russia. If we do it right in the Arab world, China could be shaking in summer. Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaI was one of Barack Obama's earliest supporters when he ran for president. But the guy confounded me by absolutely refusing to hold discussions on race. Instead he became president and pumped billions upon billions into inner city schools.
Posturing on race, that was Jesse Jackson. To Obama race meant getting the kids some good education. I could not argue against that. No you-love-me-you-love-me-not race talk for my man Obama.
He was right. I was wrong.
Recently I have been impatient with him on Libya. Bomb the shit out of Gaddafi, I thought. But Barack waited and waited and worked behind the scenes until the Arab League did the right thing, until the UN Security Council did the right thing.
He was right. I was wrong.
And now you will see some real democracy action in Libya. The rebels will take over Tripoli, but not at the point of a gun. You take over Tripoli by organizing mass protests. That is the way it was always meant to be.
New York Times: Specter of Rebel Rout Helps Shift U.S. Policy on Libya: some military analysts have called a no-drive zone, to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from moving tanks and artillery into Benghazi..... the world had only days, or even hours, to head off a Qaddafi victory...... “What everybody is focused on is drawing a line, literally in the sand, around Benghazi, to prevent Qaddafi’s forces from capturing the city and staging a bloodbath,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “If Qaddafi wins, it could kill the moment in the entire Middle East.” ....... Libya’s deputy to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, who last month broke with the Qaddafi regime, warned that if the international community did not intervene in the next 10 hours, there was a risk of genocide
Hindustan Times: Gaddafi announces 'decisive battle' today:Misrata, the country's third city, has a population of half a million people. It lies 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the capital Tripoli.
BBC: Libya: Red Cross pulls out of Benghazi fearing attack: Government forces say they have captured Ajdabiya, the last town before Benghazi, but the rebels deny this..... "We are extremely concerned about what will happen to civilians, the sick and wounded, detainees and others who are entitled to protection in times of conflict," said Simon Brooks, head of the ICRC mission in Libya. ..... Jalal al-Gallal of the rebels' Transitional National Council in the city said there would be a "massacre" if they did not intervene. ..... "He [Gaddafi] will kill civilians, he will kill dreams, he will destroy us," he told the BBC. "It will be on the international community's conscience." ..... "Let's save the martyred Libyan people together. Time is now counted in days, or even hours. The worst would be for the Arab League's call and the Security Council's decisions to fail because of armed force." .... Asked about targeted strikes, she said all options were on the table.
Bloomberg: Qaddafi Hits Rebel Capital, Son Says War ‘Finished’ in 48 Hours: Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, scoffed at yesterday’s United Nations Security Council discussions about authorizing a no-fly zone. “It’s too late,” he said in an interview with EuroNews television, according to a transcript on its website. “In 48 hours, we will have finished our military operation. We are at the gates of Benghazi.” ..... Libyan government forces continued to fight pockets of rebel resistance Ajdabiya, a city 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Benghazi, and attacked the blockaded city of Misrata, the last rebel holdout near Tripoli. ...... “The situation in Benghazi is calm,” Essam Gheriani, a spokesman for the rebels, said by phone yesterday from the city. “We are not concerned by what Saif al-Islam said. Our armed forces have taken all the necessary measures to protect Benghazi. Qaddafi has been trying to take over Misrata for two weeks. How would he manage in Benghazi that is a much bigger city than Misrata?” ...... “I don’t believe that any member of the Security Council could take the position of a spectator when people are being killed daily and cities demolished,” he said. “What are they waiting for before intervening?” ..... at Qaddafi-paid African mercenaries are headed toward Benghazi in a convoy of 400 vehicles. The Security Council needs to impose the no-fly zone, and go further in authorizing air attacks on Qaddafi’s ground troops, within “10 hours.” ..... In his EuroNews interview, Qaddafi said rebels should flee to Egypt while they can. “We have no intention of killing them or taking revenge on these traitors who have betrayed our people,” he said. “We say to them that they can run into Egypt quite safely because Libya no longer belongs to them. A lot of them have already left for Egypt.” ...... Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini proposed the convening of a European, Arab and African summit to discuss the almost monthlong fighting in Libya ..... David Cameron said leaving Qaddafi in power would send a “terrible message” not only to the Libyan people but also to those in the region who desire democracy
Voice Of America: Libya’s Opposition Tries to Define Itself to Gain Western Support: Despite anxiety and fear, Benghazis still widely support the 11-person provisional transitional council -- a group of men and women who lead the opposition. .... Council spokesman Abdul Hefda Ghoga offers this explanation. “We would like to assure everybody that once Gadhafi is gone it will be a much better place than it has been for the last 40 years. We will have true democracy in Libya. There will be a civil state that is independent and enjoys its civil rights,” he said. ...... Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi portrays the rebels as religious extremists. "It is a small group from Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Palestine who entered cities, they entered Zentan, Zawiyah and Benghazi and then what happened? They recruited youngsters, juveniles under the age of 20 upon whom the law cannot even apply," he said. ..... In Benghazi, there is little talk of establishing any kind of Islamic caliphate. For out of work Faraj Saber, it is all about having more of a voice…and a choice. “We should have more democracy, election…nobody rule us or control us for five years, fours years, not 40 years, like Gadhafi,” Saber said ..... “Once we are through this stage, we will work on developing a national dialogue among all Libyan forces in order to put the basis for the next stage. And we will have to develop together a civil organization to establish a constitution and then we will look on how to move into an election period,” Ghoga said.
Voice Of America: Libyan Forces Pound Rebel Areas, UN Security Council Meets: Ajdabiya is the last large town on the road to the opposition's eastern stronghold of Benghazi. The Libyan government urged Benghazi residents to hand over weapons and support a government advance on the city.
Reuters: Rebels fight to stall Gaddafi's army in east: "There are a couple of tanks there that sporadically fire at the city. But Ajdabiyah's city centre and other access points are peaceful and not one man from Gaddafi's force wanders around." ..... Earlier on Wednesday, weary government soldiers returning from the frontlines told journalists that they were meeting renewed resistance from rebel positions near the city. ..... The rebel army, made up largely of young volunteers with little training and defectors from the government military, has been hammered by the artillery, tanks and warplanes of Gaddafi's troops and looks now to be relying on guerrilla hit-and-run tactics to stay in the fight.
Business Insider: Qaddafi Says He Will Join Al Qaeda If The West Invades: Qaddafi is switching scare tactics. ....... For weeks he warned that any ouster of himself would let Al Qaeda take control of Libya...... Now he warns that in an invasion he would join forces with Al Qaeda. Qaddafi told Il Giornale: "We will ally ourselves with al-Qaida and declare holy war."
Used to be about do gooderism. Used to be about helping the Libyan people out. Maybe they can't do it themselves in the face of bottomless brutality. Maybe they can't stand in the face of aerial strikes. Not any more.
Now this has become about America. Here is a guy with billions at his disposal now daring America to an Al Qaeda style Holy War.
Look, I am no American stooge. For me democracy is not about America. I have strong views on race relations in America. I have strong views on campaign finance reform. During the apartheid era Gaddafi was one of the few friends Nelson Mandela's African National Congress had. Gaddafi has been at the forefront of the idea of a United States Of Africa. But you have to be elected to be a country's leader. You have to contest elections. You have to respect human rights. You have to respect free speech. You have to respect a people's right to peaceful assembly. And this guy has not been doing it.
For me this is not about doing America'd bidding. I want Iran to become a modern democracy and I want that Iran to ask as to why America has nuclear weapons. We have to complain about the global drug trade, but we also have to complain about the global gun trade where America is the largest supplier. Guns are deadlier than drugs.
For me this is about the people of Libya, for me this is about the people across the Arab world.
And now this guy just crossed a line whereby it is no longer about Libya, this is now about America. What will you do to a guy who sits on billions of dollars and tens of thousands of armed men with a global network who is threatening terrorist strikes upon the US?
You conduct surgical strikes and you take him out, that's what. This is no longer about democracy and Libya and air strikes and no fly zones. We are in the War On Terror territory now.
If Gaddafi can treat half of Libya like Saddam Hussein treated Kuwait, if the Saudi king can send his army into a neighboring country to pull a Gaddafi on a people peacefully demonstrating for democracy, if we are requesting Chinese and Russian cooperation for the necessary work for democracy - I mean, we might as well seek Gaddafi's cooperation on human rights then - I am at a loss for words.
For the first time I have begun to have my doubts about Barack Obama. I am not seeing much audacity. I am not seeing much hope.
The fire of democracy is being snuffed out by two mad dogs in the Middle East through brute force.
This is how the Burmese Generals did it a few years back. This is how they did it in Iran in 2009. They decided there was no limit to how much brute force they were willing to unleash upon a peacefully demonstrating people.
I am not feeling too good right now.
The thing to do was to get a NATO mandate to make surgical strikes to take the mad dog out early on when the rebels were looking to march on Tripoli. Instead you have a scenario where Gaddafi is about to bulldoze Benghazi. This is sad.
If Gaddafi and the Saudi king get away with what they are doing, forget the idea of democracy demonstrations in China. It is not happening. The momentum will have been broken. A democracy movement is all about momentum.
The Atlantic : North Korea’s Digital Underground: the very archetype of a “closed society.” It ranks dead last—196th out of 196 countries—in Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press index. Unlike the citizens of, say, Tunisia or Egypt, to name two countries whose populations recently tapped the power of social media to help upend the existing political order, few North Koreans have access to Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. In fact, except for a tiny elite, the DPRK’s 25 million inhabitants are not connected to the Internet. Televisions are set to receive only government stations. International radio signals are routinely jammed, and electricity is unreliable. Freestanding radios are illegal. But every North Korean household and business is outfitted with a government-controlled radio hardwired to a central station. The speaker comes with a volume control, but no off switch. ........ media insurgents have a two-pronged strategy, integrating Cold War methods (Voice of America–like shortwave broadcasts in; samizdat-like info out) and 21st-century hardware: SD chips, thumb drives, CDs, e-books, miniature recording devices, and cell phones. ....... these new media organizations are helping to create something remarkable: a corps of North Korean citizen-journalists practicing real journalism inside the country. ....... This past December, Open Radio North Korea, a broadcast-news organization, broke the story that a train headed for Pyongyang with gifts from China for Kim Jong Un, the heir apparent, was reportedly sabotaged and derailed, in one of several sporadic and mostly unreported acts of resistance that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. ....... in January 2010, a North Korean factory worker was publicly executed by firing squad for phoning news about the price of rice to someone in South Korea ...... Like most of the other independent news organizations, it receives funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as other NGOs and private donors. ...... The footage Ahn brought out was shocking: filthy, barefoot children scavenging for food, picking kernels of corn from cow manure. Glassy-eyed, the children told the interviewer that their parents had died and they were homeless and alone. ...... Once these North Korean defectors made it across the Yalu or Tumen River, they were startled to discover that even the poorest Chinese had higher living standards than they did ....... (A 2009 survey found that 58 percent of North Koreans had regular access to a cassette recorder with radio, and 21 percent watched videos on video-compact-disc players.) The confluence of these developments created a remarkable journalistic opening: just as defectors in unprecedented numbers were bringing more information out of North Korea, the spread of markets and secondhand technology was creating a conduit for getting more information in. ....... Until the late 1990s, all international phone calls were routed through Beijing or Moscow. ..... Cell phones, both legal and illegal, have become a fact of life only during the past five years. ..... NK Reform Radio interviews defectors now living in South Korea. Some are unable to fit into South Korean society ...... The subject that most interests North Koreans is the country’s ruling dynasty: founder Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, and his presumed heir, Kim Jong Un. Most of their subjects know little more than the idealized history of the Kims churned out by the state’s propaganda mill. They are shocked to learn that Kim Jong Il was born in Russia, and not on the mythic Mount Paektu; Koreans are quite socially conservative and are aghast that he has fathered several children with women other than his wives. ...... d a clear correlation between the “consumption of foreign media” and “more negative assessments of the regime and its intentions.” ....... One night he heard a South Korean program that contradicted a number of the myths surrounding the Kim family. After a little research, he discovered that the broadcasts were true. Was everything he’d been taught a lie, he wondered? It wasn’t long before he defected. ..... had several e-books, which I got from China. The national security force arrested me for possessing them,” he tells me. The books were pretty innocuous fare, mostly motivational titles like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe idea never was to bomb Gaddafi into submission. The military action has been designed to make sure he does not unleash animal brutality upon peaceful protesters. Otherwise there were mass protests already in Tripoli. Once Gaddafi has been neutralized, the thing for the Libyan opposition to do is to organize peaceful protests all over again, with the international community standing by. Could you bring a hundred thousand people out into the streets of Tripoli? That is the question. The idea is not for the Libyan opposition to outgun Gaddafi's forces. That never was the idea. The idea always was to win through nonviolent methods. 
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
