BBC News - Libya protests: Gaddafi says 'all my people love me'
Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has told the BBC he is loved by all his people and has denied there have been any protests in Tripoli.
Col Gaddafi said that his people would die to protect him.
He laughed at the suggestion he would leave Libya and said he felt betrayed by leaders who had urged him to quit.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
28 February, 2011
SOMALILAND: Arsonists terrorise terrified residents in Hargeisa
SOMALILAND: Arsonists terrorise terrified residents in Hargeisa
Qalinle Hussein
HARGEISA — Police in Hargeisa are trying to solve a very rare case in the country where arsonists caused close to 30 fires in the past two weeks, leaving officials perplexed as to who was causing them and why.
The attacks first broke out mid this month in the Ga’an Libah neighborhood where 25 homes in New Hargeisa suburb were completely destroyed or damaged. It is now reported, the arsonists are targeting new areas around the city.
On Tuesday, the state police arrested four suspects in New Hargeisa but until now they have failed to establish any sufficient evidence linking the four teenagers to the crimes. After the arrests, the police were confident they had cracked the case and officials moved quickly to reassure the public that the arsonists were taken off the streets.
Residents protest against Interior Minister's words (Ismail Farjar/VOA)
Using the airwaves, the Interior minister Dr Abdi Mohamed Gabose tried to calm the public and confirm his department was closing in on the attackers while speaking to VOA Somali-Services radio station.
“In total 19 properties were targeted, two consisted of bricks, no serious damages were inflected. The remaining 17 were all huts made of plastics and papers except two that were iron sheet materials,” Dr Gabose said.
He denied reports that the arsonists were using chemicals and paint products to vandalize solid constructions such as bricks.
“When we collected materials that had been thrown into properties I can assure you that there won’t any chemicals other than gasoline and petroleum products,” he said. He also added the attacks were only occurring in Ga’an Libah and has not spread.
Hours after the minister’s message was aired, he came under attack from outraged residents in New Hargeisa and was accused of downplaying the seriousness and the level of damages. They took to the streets and protested against him in disgust. They said he was ignoring their safety and that he failed to see the real damages including the untold emotional distress it was having on the victims.
The case is no where near solved and the attacks are continuing in other parts of the city. Just today, Saturday 26 local time, at least two homes were burnt to the ground in the Ahmed Moge neighbourhood.
This latest figure brings the total number of homes destroyed to about 27. All the houses, except two, were traditional huts known as aqal Somali while others were plastic tents, which could not be saved. Most of these affected families are impoverished former pastoralists communities who had been displaced by droughts from their rural lives.
There have been no reports of death or injuries but the fire still poses a threat to lives and homes. All of the homes were attacked during the bright daylight, most occurring between the hours of 11am and 2pm.
Residents in the affected area are now on top of their roofs watching for more attacks while volunteers are being urged to keep watch on the streets. The terrified residents demanded justice regardless of the arsonists’ identity and motives. They called on the government and relief agencies to assist the displaced people. The government is yet to comment on the situation and there are no reports of them offering any emergency accommodations.
The religious leaders condemned the attacks and called for calm. They said it was against the Islamic law to displace innocent people. They are collecting donations for the victims.
Police detectives said they were investigating the case and will put an end to it soon. However, residents in Ga’an Libah and Ahmed Moge have called on the Hargeisa’s mayor Hussein Mohamoud Ji’ir to resign along with his councils. They insist on that he is giving this case until now a low priority.
Police have also renewed their appeal for anyone with information about the incidents to come forward, particularly anyone who may have witnessed the attacks.
This is the first time Somaliland has had a case like this and the police does not have an arson squad nor specialists in similar fields. The city does not have adequate firefighters and practices.
The interior minister blames the growing population. Due to the relative peace, Hargeisa has been growing city in the last twenty years and its now said to have a population of one million.
SomalilandPress.com
27 February, 2011
John Simpson in Libya: Gaddafi was mad, bad and dangerous to know
John Simpson in Libya: Gaddafi was mad, bad and dangerous to know
Five rocks in a line on the tarmac made a minimal roadblock, and two men with broom handles as weapons guarded the road into eastern Libya, stamping their feet in the freezing rain.
There has inevitably been enormous corruption in Gaddafi's Libya. But Libya has been cursed with the absurdity and foolishness of their leader as well Photo: REUTERS
By John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor 8:00AM GMT 27 Feb 2011
Brown teeth flashed in a genuine grin, and one of them shouted: "Engilisi very good!"
Behind him, on a small roadside obelisk which might once have carried a picture of Col Muammar Gaddafi, hung a long-hidden red, green and black banner decorated with a silver star and crescent moon. It was the national flag of the old kingdom of Libya, which was overthrown in the coup launched on Sept 1 1969 by the young Colonel. Now, after 41 years in hiding, the flag is back. And the Colonel is being overthrown.
It was very much like being back in the revolutionary year of 1989, driving across the Yugoslav/Romanian border immediately after Ceausescu's fall from power: the air of improvisation, the sheer unexpected delight at being free of a repressive regime which had lasted so long that everyone thought it was permanent.
And there was the symbolism of the flag. In Romania they cut the Communist symbols out, so the old tricolor flew everywhere with a jagged hole in its centre; here, they brought the old flag out of hiding places and hung them up.
It was an act of restitution, a symbolic eradication of everything Col Gaddafi's crazy rule has tried to establish. But, as in Ceausescu's Romania, it will take decades to restore the immense waste, and the loss and outright theft of the nation's patrimony.
Libya is an empty country: an enormous section of North Africa containing only six million people. Divide the trillions which the country's oil had produced since the early 1970s by six million and everyone here should be a multi-millionaire. Not so. Libya may not be dirt poor like Sudan or Yemen, but the comfortable capitalism of Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt is entirely missing. Even Algeria seems richer.
The stony desert is dotted with roofless, uncompleted houses. In the occasional small towns along the road the solitary shop will sell only the cheapest Chinese plastic goods and the kind of low-quality comestibles which are dumped on poor countries. The televisions that locals crowd around are elderly and the picture quality is bad.
There has inevitably been enormous corruption in Gaddafi's Libya: a small, impenetrable elite and a closed system always ensure that. But Libya has been cursed with his absurdity and foolishness as well. In the 1980s he abolished shops, and seriously considered abolishing money as well. The market economy, the cash nexus, was to be destroyed.
Those were the days of the Little Green Book and the Great SPLAJ, as it was officially known: the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, or republic. Economic activity virtually collapsed, and the vast hypermarkets which the Great SPLAJ ordained for the outskirts of every town and village stayed stubbornly empty. A genuine fear of starvation briefly caught hold, in a country that notionally had one of the highest GDPs on earth. After that the Little Green Book, a largely illiterate set of economic ideas, half Mao and half Pol Pot, was forgotten.
On our journey east to Benghazi we saw the effects of all this: the reasonably well-educated but wholly unemployed young men discussing impractical schemes for their revolution, the nervous older men, glad at the thought they might be free of Col Gaddafi at last, yet afraid he might return.
Yet Ceausescu's Romania had these things too. In April 1989 I toured round it and came to the conclusion that the very instinct for liberty had been crushed out of the population; yet eight months later they chased Ceausescu and his Lady Macbeth-like wife out of power and riddled them with bullets. You don't, I learnt then, eradicate the desire for freedom that easily.
Since my first visit to Libya in 1978, when Col Gaddafi had the aura of revolutionary chic about him, I have been back here nine times: sometimes a welcome guest, sometimes a pariah to be held in my hotel room for days at a time.
Whenever I met him, there was never any doubt that his mind was deeply disturbed. He could be pleasant, in a distant, dismissive kind of way, but he never made eye-contact.
Once, when I sat in his famous multicoloured tent, he threw his head back and laughed uproariously every time I asked him a question; then brought his head down again to look at me without the trace of even a smile. The effect was so disturbing that the producer and I considered editing out the manic laughter. Yet that, aside from the ethical implications, made him seem even weirder. The laughter stayed, and the viewers were bemused.
In August 1980 he summoned some of the world's best-known journalists to a press conference, kept them waiting for days, then appeared dressed like Sherlock Holmes in a Burberry ulster. He wandered through the crowd, greeting people, though again without looking them in the eye. At the other end of the room the door opened and he slipped through it. In the silence which fell we could hear the key turn in the lock. That was it: there would be no press conference after all.
In 1998, when the outside world started to demand that Libya deliver the men accused of carrying out the Lockerbie bombing, I was again invited to Tripoli. Col Gaddafi appeared wearing a straw trilby-like hat, sideways on. Sitting down, he flicked away the flies with a whisk in a gesture that looked as though he were ritually whipping himself. Throughout our 40-minute interview he would lift himself out of his chair and break wind, loudly enough to be heard on the soundtrack. When I wrote about it afterwards for this newspaper, the then editor gave the article the headline "Warm Wind Of Compromise Blows From Gaddafi". But there was a price to be paid for committing lèse-majesté. I was never given another visa to Libya, and near my home in London I was followed, screamed at and attacked by a man of Arab appearance.
With hindsight, it seems unwise of Tony Blair to have tried to present Col Gaddafi as a statesman with whom Britain should do business. In Benghazi today, where leading figures in the resistance have British links, there is a baffled anger that a figure of international prominence should have accorded Col Gaddafi so much respect.
There is of course a parallel: Jim Callaghan twisting the Queen's arm back in 1978 to award Nicolae Ceausescu an honorary knighthood. Departures from strict principle usually punish the expediency of the moment.
When the revolution came in Romania, literally no one supported the Ceausescus. Even their bodyguards abandoned them. Col Gaddafi still has the backing, reluctant or otherwise, of several thousand soldiers and a similar number of political followers in Tripoli. Elsewhere, though, his support has completely evaporated; there are reports that his own tribe has disowned him. But the disturbing possibility of a Götterdämmerung in his bunker, his sons around him, remains.
That, certainly, is the expectation of one man who has spent almost his entire life in Col Gaddafi's service. Gen Abdel Fatteh Younis, who until last Tuesday was Libya's interior minister and the commander of its special forces, has known Col Gaddafi since 1964. Gen Younis was involved in the coup five years later, and has been part of the regime ever since. He now supports the revolution, having (he says) been converted by so much bloodshed, and believes Col Gaddafi will die fighting. He is also certain that the Colonel is mentally unhinged. "He takes very dangerous decisions in a state of anger," he told me. "It's impossible to think he's completely sane."
In 1998 Col Gaddafi published Escape to Hell and Other Stories, a volume of remarkably gloomy short stories. One describes him wandering the streets being pestered by people who want him to provide them with things – radios, televisions, washing machines and (more oddly) cats or dogs. He calls this lonely figure "a poor benighted Bedouin".
Libya as it is today, poverty-stricken, churned up by violence, disregarded in the world at large except for its oil, has been created in Col Gaddafi's own weird image. For 41 years a particularly nasty secret police has kept him in power. Characters like Gen Younis were prepared to go along with him because it was worth their while, and because it was too dangerous to go against him.
Now Col Gaddafi's short story has come true. In my hotel in Benghazi they put posters of him on the floor for people to walk on. Power and strength are being stripped away from him, day by day, and he is little more than the poor benighted Bedouin of his own imaginings.
The tragedy is that the exercise of his fantasies has damaged this rich, biddable, pleasant country for decades to come.
John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor.
The Telegraph
Clashes Between Police, Protesters Kill 2 in Oman | News | English
Clashes Between Police, Protesters Kill 2 in Oman News English
Witnesses in the Persian Gulf Sultanate of Oman say security forces killed two demonstrators Sunday after firing rubber bullets into a crowd demanding political reforms.The clashes Sunday between police and stone-throwing protesters occurred in the town of Sohar, about 200 kilometers northwest of the capital, Muscat.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Witnesses in the Persian Gulf Sultanate of Oman say security forces killed two demonstrators Sunday after firing rubber bullets into a crowd demanding political reforms.The clashes Sunday between police and stone-throwing protesters occurred in the town of Sohar, about 200 kilometers northwest of the capital, Muscat.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
SNAP ANALYSIS-Tunisian PM resignation may encourage opposition | News by Country | Reuters
SNAP ANALYSIS-Tunisian PM resignation may encourage opposition News by Country Reuters
TUNIS Feb 27 (Reuters) - The resignation of Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi was aimed at easing street tensions, but could backfire by encouraging the opposition to make further demands, analysts said on Sunday.
Ghannouchi's resignation followed days of violent protests against his leadership of the interim government which is charged with preparing elections.
North Africa's most developed state has been in flux since an uprising toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, and critics of Ghannouchi have accused him of being too close to the former leadership.
TUNIS Feb 27 (Reuters) - The resignation of Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi was aimed at easing street tensions, but could backfire by encouraging the opposition to make further demands, analysts said on Sunday.
Ghannouchi's resignation followed days of violent protests against his leadership of the interim government which is charged with preparing elections.
North Africa's most developed state has been in flux since an uprising toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, and critics of Ghannouchi have accused him of being too close to the former leadership.
No Easy Solutions To Somali Piracy Threat
No Easy Solutions To Somali Piracy Threat
The U.S. military says it may try 15 Somalis in connection with the
deaths of four American hostages in February. Despite the presence of
an international flotilla off the Somali coast, pirates continue to
seize a growing number of vessels over an ever-larger geographic area.
NEAL CONAN, host:
On Monday, Somali pirates shot and killed four Americans held hostage
aboard a captured yacht as U.S. naval forces stood by. These are the
first U.S. citizens to die in the pirate attacks off the east coast of
Africa. The U.S. military says that the 15 Somalis detained after the
killings could face trial in the U.S.
Pirates continue to hold hundreds of other sailors and dozens of
ships. If business continues, as it has over the past several years,
they will eventually be ransomed for millions of dollars, and business
appears to be booming. Despite an international flotilla of some 30
warships, more ships are being seized than ever, and pirates now
operate over a wider area.
Professor NIKOLAS GVOSDEV (U.S. Naval War College): Thank you.
CONAN: The U.S. military certainly has the manpower, the training and
weapons to tackle the pirate threat, but deterrence doesn't seem to be
working.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Well, let me give you my opinion on that. I'm not
speaking on behalf of the Navy. These are my own assessments. It's a
mix of issues. The first is the will, the political will to get
involved in Somalia itself because this problem is being addressed
right now only from the sea. We're trying to deter attacks. We're
trying to protect ships. But the problem lies on land. It lies in
villages and port cities, in ungoverned spaces, where, as you just
alluded to in your opening, this is a profitable business. It is
essentially the main driver for revenue in Somalia. Everyone - it
trickles down not only from the businessmen who sponsor pirate attacks
through to the pirates, through to a whole variety of villagers and
people who provide services.
And if you're not going to tackle this issue on land, what we've been
doing up to this point - not just the United States, but the entire
coalition, the European Union, China, Russia, India, South Korea - has
been to try to limit these attacks at sea. But again, as you noted in
the opening, the pirates are getting better equipped. They're able to
strike over a much wider range of ocean. We've even had reports now of
pirate vessels using mother ships that had been off the coast of
India.
And you think of this as a problem emanating from Somalia and if there
are now pirates who are in the middle of the Indian Ocean and actually
closer to the Persian Gulf and closer to the coast of India itself, it
gives you an idea of the ability to which they've been able to extend
their range. Thirty ships simply can't cover that degree of ocean, not
with the number of vessels that transit the area. This is a key
shipping lane. It's a key link to energy markets. And there's just
simply not enough vessels there to protect all of the ships that could
potentially enter the area.
CONAN: And when you say deal with the problem on land, what are you
talking about?
Prof. GVOSDEV: It depends. There are several ways forward. One would
be to start aggressively carrying military action to the shore,
because up to this point pirate sanctuaries have not been attacked on
land, with the exception of the French commando raid in 2008, which
liberated several people who had been taken hostage. Otherwise there's
been no on-land action against pirates. There's a sense that Somalia
is sanctuary.
One of the things we saw with this incident, which led to the four
Americans being killed, was that the pirates were desperately trying
to get the yacht back into Somali territorial waters, because there is
a sense, over the last number of years, that if you can just simply
get back into Somali waters, you're safe from retribution. You can
then take your hostages ashore and negotiate for their release.
Another item we may begin to look at - and the situation is changing
because of what's happening in Sudan. With South Sudan separating from
North Sudan, that removes perhaps some of the reluctance we've had up
to this point to countenance the division of Somalia itself into
smaller, more sustainable entities which could, in fact, exercise
greater control over their coastline, provide more opportunities for
their citizens. So I'm thinking specifically here of Somaliland.
Up to this point, U.S. policy, EU policy has been to try to create a
functional, central government for Somalia to control the entire
country. We may now be moving to a situation where we move away from
that and accept the reality that a unified Somalia is not possible. So
let's try to at least narrow the areas of ungoverned space in Somalia,
make it more manageable by recognizing some of these other statelets
that have risen on Somali territory.
CONAN: As we look at the situation that developed in the last few
days, does the killing of American citizens change the calculations
here?
Prof. GVOSDEV: It does change the calculations, because first, this
has been a change of operations for the pirates. Up to this point, you
have not had people killed by the Somali pirates. You've had deaths.
You had, for instance in 2008, when you had the hijacking of the
Ukrainian freighter, the captain died of a heart attack when the
pirates boarded. You've had some accidental deaths. But you've never
had the pirates deliberately targeting or killing the captives that
they've taken.
This may send a different signal now, that there's a greater degree of
desperation. We also have to look at the number of pirates that were
involved in this incident. And it raises the question of: Was this
one, single, unified pirate gang? Or was this several different pirate
groups that converged on the yacht at the same time and couldn't agree
on how to negotiate with the United States, how to proceed forward?
CONAN: The circumstances of what actually happened in the shooting are
unclear at this point. It's not known whether the hostages were
executed or caught in a crossfire in an argument.
Prof. GVOSDEV: In a crossfire - exactly. And we don't know - and that
-but it raises this point that since - increasingly, over the last
year, more and more Somalis are turning pirate. This initially started
off as a relatively small group of ex-fishermen and ex-militia men.
But over the last several years, success begets success.
And the more that people have seen that this is a profitable sideline,
the more you've had demand for people to get involved in this
activity, and that raises the question of: Do you have more competing
gangs, less control? Are they fighting over potential targets? Which
make it all so harder.
In the old days, you had a relative sense of who to negotiate with,
and the rules of the game were clear. They're becoming a lot less
clear now. It also raises the question about the rules of engagement
for the navies that are participating in the anti-piracy mission.
We've seen - particularly in the last number of months - the Indian
Navy, the South Korean Navy, the U.S. Navy being much more aggressive
now in going after pirates, in trying to retake ships, in trying to
prevent them from getting back to Somalia. The pirates may be
interpreting this as that they need to show that they are serious,
that they mean business and that they will, in fact, be willing to
inflict deadly force on their captives should they take control of
vessels.
Linked to this further is now questions about what happens to pirates
after they've been captured. You noted that there's now talk that we
will take the pirates who were captured and extradite them to stand
trial in the United States.
Other than the Maersk incident, this is a - this represents a
departure for the U.S., because traditionally, we have sought to have
pirates be tried in African locales, in Kenya or the Seychelles rather
than bringing them back to the United States for trial. So this may
reflect a change in our own modus operandi in dealing with pirates,
moving away from either taking them to Kenya or, what most countries
were doing up to last year, the famed catch and release. Again, this
was part of the rules of the game that many Somali pirates assume that
we were operating under, that if you captured pirates and they hadn't
harmed the crews, you would just simply disarm them and let them go.
Now, the sense that we may be trying to not just simply capture them
but take them in for trial, and then hand down some serious jail time
which, again, may be changing the rules of the game as far as the
pirates see operations in the last several years.
CONAN: Nikolas Gvosdev teaches national security studies at the U.S.
Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He speaks for himself and
not the War College or the U.S. Navy.
Let's get some callers in on the line. This is Jennifer. Jennifer with
us from Monroe, in Michigan.
JENNIFER (Caller): Hi.
CONAN: Hi.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Hello.
JENNIFER: Well, I'm a teacher, so I'm a little bit biased. I think
that we should take a look at history and take a look at what has been
done before in dealing with piracy and take the lessons from there and
build onto that, because piracy was a huge, huge problem for the East
and the West Indies companies in the 17th and 18th centuries.
And there was a lot of work that the United Kingdom, Holland and even
the United States had to do on cracking down on piracy and essentially
eradicating and making it so unprofitable that these guys just didn't
want to risk hanging. Because for a while there, the policy wasn't
catch and release. The policy was catch and hang. And...
CONAN: Nikolas - Jennifer, thanks very much for the history lesson, as
Nikolas Gvosdev, I'm sure, knows this history. And this goes back at
least to the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Certainly. We've always had pirates. And the question
has been - there are several ways of dealing with pirates. One of the
classic ways in the Mediterranean, particularly during the Ottoman
period, was for pirates to be legitimized. One of the famous North
African pirates ended up as an admiral of the Ottoman navy. He was
-easier to bring him into the system than to take him out. These are
some of the issues we have with Somalia today, unlike, say, the
Barbary states, which is usually a comparison you hear of the late
17th and early 18th centuries.
CONAN: This is on the coast of North Africa.
Prof. GVOSDEV: The coast of North Africa. That was state-sponsored.
You had states that were involved in the pirate activities, so you had
actually authorities that you could negotiate with. And, in fact, John
Adams impressed the negotiators from North Africa with his anecdotes
about his ability to blow smoke rings when he was sitting around,
negotiating the amount of tribute that would be paid - protection
money that would be paid. And the U.S., under the Washington and Adams
administrations, in fact, paid protection money to the states of North
Africa.
And then under Jefferson, the decision was made that the tribute was
becoming too expensive, and too many ships were being seized. So then
we went for the military option. In Somalia, the problem, of course,
is that we don't have - this is not being sponsored by a state. This
is not - these are non-state actors, so there's a command and control
issue there, which, I think, is - makes it harder to say, well, if we
just simply deal with a state actor, we could solve this.
One of the proposals that's been circulating is - and it goes back to
this question of opportunity: You know, why are fishermen setting out
to be pirates? Why not do something else? There's been this talk about
taking the Sons of Iraq model, which worked to get Sunni tribesmen in
Iraq hired to be security guards and to be auxiliary military forces
alongside U.S. forces as a way to get them to stop attacking American
forces and to become de facto allies.
So there's been some talk in Somalia of could you do a Sons of
Somalia, which is to go and recruit - among fishermen, among sailors -
a kind of rudimentary Somali Coast Guard. It would have to, of course,
be paid for and equipped, but not - Somalia couldn't support it
itself. But then you would be offering an alternative to people who
otherwise would feel that their only livelihood would be to turn
pirate, would be to say: Well, why not come in and work on a kind of
rudimentary Coast Guard with the international community, with the
international taskforce that's there, as a way of building up a
counter-economic incentive, instead of turning pirate? Again, the
question about would we want to work with Somaliland and others to
also build up their capabilities. So there are some - some of these
different ideas are floating around there.
CONAN: We're talking about what to do with Somali pirates. You're
listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
And let's see if we can go next to - this is Eric, Eric with us from
Cincinnati.
ERIC (Caller): Hi, Neal. Thanks for taking my call.
CONAN: Sure.
ERIC: You know, we've been batting around historical notions, and I'd
like to toss out the name of Stephen Decatur, the premise being that
you rationally has to clean up pirate nests, which is what he famously
did so well.
A couple of comments here. First, piracy - there's state-sponsored
piracy and private enterprise piracy. We're dealing in Somali with
private enterprise piracy. There's really not much we can do, except
when we see them, catch them in the act, don't lug them home for
trial. History says throw them overboard or sink them. I think we
should be doing exactly that.
CONAN: Eric, thanks very much...
ERIC: But if they do get away with it, we've got to go out and clean
them out. It's nasty. It's expensive. But what else are you going to
do?
CONAN: Well, what else are you going to do, Nikolas Gvosdev? Up until
now, the shippers whose ships are being seized and held hostage have
found it easier to just pay the ransom and ship - escalate the
insurance charges a little bit and say, well, this is just a cost of
doing business. We don't want to get involved in military action.
Prof. GVOSDEV: And that is still the dynamic that is prevailing. It is
still cheaper to pay ransom once in a while. When you think about the
number of ships that transit the area, you have less than one percent
chance of even being approached by pirates, much less being taken
over, so that for most people, most shipping companies, most boaters
and others, they're willing to gamble. And up to this point, as long
as it doesn't happen to you, you say: Well, why should I have to pay
these extra cost? Why do I want more security? Why should I pay extra
taxes to fund a naval presence that's there?
What this incident may end up doing - because not simply that you had
an American yacht seized, but Americans killed - is to begin changing
some of that dynamic to say something's changed.
Some people have talked about this being the equivalent of a 9/11
moment, that when 9/11 occurred, up to that point, the rule of thumb
was if you were hijacked on a plane, you cooperated with the hijackers
because they were going to land the plane and negotiate for your safe
release. After 9/11, the rule of thumb is is that you have to take
hijackers out.
The question is whether or not we've reached that tipping point in the
waters off of Somalia where shipping companies and governments and
publics have reached that 9/11 moment where they say, we can't
tolerate this anymore. This isn't just simply a price of doing
business that you accept some extra insurance payments and the costs
of ransoms are spread out throughout the system, but something
actually has to be done. And then you move to - as the caller alluded
- the Decatur solution, which is you actually have to begin cleaning
out the pirate nests.
And again, the historical example is the first two presidential
administrations in the U.S. found it cheaper to pay tribute. The third
found it cheaper, in the end, to go for military action. And then,
ultimately, the regime changed in North Africa.
CONAN: Nikolas Gvosdev, thank you very much for your time today.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Thank you.
CONAN: Nikolas Gvosdev joined us from a studio at the U.S. Naval War
College in Newport, Rhode Island. Again, he spoke for himself.
Tomorrow, it's TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. Ira Flatow will
join us with a look at our love affair with technology. Have we grown
too fond of our devices? That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION:
SCIENCE FRIDAY. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you again next
week.
I'm Neal Conan, NPR News, in Washington.
To: kulmiye@yahoogroups.com
From: ihussein22@yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:33:48 -0800
Subject: [kulmiye] Ooda ka rog
SCWW
Salaan bacada salaan waan salamayaa akhyaarta reer kulmiye dhamaan
.Waxaan gudida emailka group-ka ka codsanayaa in ay ooda ka rogaan
Maxamad oo ka tirsan gudida reer bristol Waa kan emailkii
Mow82@hotmail.co.uk
Waa bilaahii tawfiiq
Ibrahim hussein
: Belgium: Halal beer
Belgium: Halal beer |
France: Commentator Convicted for Inciting Racial Bias
France: Commentator Convicted for Inciting Racial Bias A French court on Friday convicted the prominent commentator Éric Zemmour on charges of "provocation to racial discrimination" for televised comments in which he suggested that a majority of criminals in France were "black and Arab," and said that employers "have the right" to deny employment to those ethnic groups. Mr. Zemmour was ordered to pay over $14,000 in legal fees and damages to the five rights groups that were the plaintiffs in the case, and also received suspended fines totaling $2,700. |
Toward Palestine's 'Mubarak moment'
Opinion | ||
Toward Palestine's 'Mubarak moment' | ||
The Palestinian Authority should dissolve itself, as it is acting in Israel's interest, writer says. | ||
The slow collapse of Palestinian collective leadership institutions in recent years has reached a crisis amid the ongoing Arab revolutions, the revelations in the Palestine Papers, and the absence of any credible peace process. Abbas hopes that elections could restore legitimacy to his leadership. Hamas has rejected such elections in the absence of a reconciliation agreement ending the division that resulted from Fatah's refusal (along with Israel and the PA's western sponsors, especially the United States) to accept the result of the last election in 2006, which Hamas decisively won. A house divided The Palestinian body politic was divided not into two broad political streams offering competing visions, as in other electoral democracies, but one stream that is aligned with, supported by and dependent on the occupation and its foreign sponsors, and another that remains committed, at least nominally, to resistance. These are contradictions that cannot be resolved through elections. The Ramallah PA under Abbas today functions as an arm of the Israeli occupation, while Hamas, its cadres jailed, tortured and repressed in the West Bank by Israel and Abbas' forces, is besieged in Gaza where it tries to govern. Meanwhile, Hamas has offered no coherent political vision to get Palestinians out of their impasse and its rule in Gaza has increasingly begun to resemble that of its Fatah counterparts in the West Bank. "The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the elected Council (the "Council"), for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338." Small mandate Given all these conditions, a newly elected PLC would only serve to further entrench divisions among Palestinians while also creating the illusion that Palestinian self-governance exists -- and can thrive -- under Israeli occupation. The PA offers no genuine self-government or protection for Palestinians under occupation, who continue to be victimized, killed, maimed and besieged by Israel with impunity while Israel confiscates and colonizes their land. Dissolving the PA With the complete collapse of the "peace process" -- the final push given by the Palestine Papers -- it is time for the PA to have its Mubarak moment. When the Egyptian tyrant finally left office on February 11, he handed power over to the armed forces. The PA should dissolve itself in a similar manner by announcing that the responsibilities delegated to it by Israel are being handed back to the occupying power, which must fulfill its duties under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. New leadership In recent years, "out of country voting" facilities were provided for large Iraqi and Afghan refugee and exile populations for elections sponsored by the powers occupying those countries. In theory, it would be possible to hold elections for all Palestinians, perhaps under UN auspices -- including the huge Palestinian diaspora in the Americas and Europe. Would the energy and expense of running a transnational Palestinian bureaucracy be worth it? Would these new bodies be vulnerable to the sorts of subversion, cooptation, and corruption that turned the original PLO from a national liberation movement into its current sad status where it has been hijacked by a collaborationist clique? Inspirational boycott Instead, they should focus on powerful, decentralized resistance, particularly boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) internationally, and the popular struggle within historic Palestine. Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, a policy advisor with the Palestinian Policy Network, and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. | ||
ALJAZEERA |
Passage to Benghazi: How to Enter Libya
Passage to Benghazi: How to Enter Libya
By Andrew Lee Butters / Benghazi
Anti-government demonstrators work in what they called "Free Libya" broadcast station in Benghazi February 26, 2011.
Asmaa Waguih / Reuters
There's a not-so secret password that gets foreign journalists coming from Egypt into Libya through customs and immigration without showing passports and through the neighborhood militia checkpoints on the coastal road from Tobruk west to Benghazi. Flash the "Victory" sign with two fingers, and as long as you are in Free Libya, the eastern half of the country controlled by the democratic opposition to the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and you'll get saluted right back and then hurried along your way.
Opposition supporters in eastern Libya are making every effort to battle the tight controls that the government has put upon information coming out of Libya, claiming that the media blackout hides the crimes and killings the government has committed against its own people. From taxi drivers offering free rides, and average citizens offering food and lodging, to the new revolutionary committees setting up press centers, Libyans have welcomed the international media with open arms, and almost everyone has a message they want to get out to the world. "You can't believe how happy I am to meet an American reporter," says Omar, an airline pilot from Benghazi, who took me to his home so I could have a warm place to write, made me lunch and played me country-western music. "The government was massacring us and there was no one here to see," he says. (See why Gaddafi's fall might not bring peace to Libya.)
After the uprising against the Gaddafi regime started, the government shut down access to the Internet, blocked international phone calls out of the country, jammed satellite phone signals, and even forced people leaving the country from the western border crossings to Tunisia to erase their photographs and mobile phone videos of the protests. On Friday, the regime flew a very small number of journalists into the capital city Tripoli, located in western Libya and still the center of government's military and security apparatus, for a brief one day-long tour of the city. One journalist reported being assaulted by a pro-Gaddafi street marcher, who quickly apologized. The government also declared that any journalist inside the country not on the approved tour would be considered to be a member of al-Qaeda.
But in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and the epicenter of the uprising, the new revolutionary government is treating journalists not like terrorists but as brothers-in-arms. English-speaking volunteer translators have thronged to a new media center housed in the soot-stained former appeals court building, which days ago had been the scene of a battle between opposition supporters and the remnants of Gaddafi's security forces in Benghazi. Inside, young men have set up computer workstations to make press passes for anyone who shows a foreign passport. They are also designing anti-Gaddafi posters and caricatures, and preparing to distribute much more sobering images depicting what they say is evidence of crimes against humanity by the Gaddafi government.
On Friday, at the Benghazi revolutionary committee's first press conference, Peter Bouckert, the emergencies director of Human Rights Watch who is part of a two-person team in the city, said that the opposition's claims are justified. He estimates that at least 300 people died violently in Benghazi during the uprising, based on actual body counts from hospitals and morgues. "It's a very conservative figure, and it's going to rise as the investigation continues," he said. "What happened here was much more serious than what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. We are talking about the government using live ammunition in a systemic campaign against peaceful demonstrations. There's also pretty clear evidence of the use of heavy weapons including anti-aircraft guns, which were turned against the people. The results were pretty horrific." (See how Gaddafi is holding on tightly to his leadership role.)
Meanwhile, the city's new government — led by a 13 member council of lawyers, judges and professors — wanted to reassure the world that the uprising was committed to democratic principles and that there would be no need for foreign military intervention. What Libya needs, said Hafiz Ghoga, the council's spokesman, was short-term humanitarian assistance, an international freeze on assets belonging to the Gaddafi family, and a no-flight zone to keep the whatever's left of the air force from turning on the people. "There is no mess in Libya except where the regime is still in power," said Ghoga.
But besides Tripoli, one critical area that remains in the control of the regime is Sert, Gaddafi's hometown, located about midway on the 700 mile costal road from Benghazi to Tripoli. Because Sert may be among the last of Gaddafi strongholds to fall, and because the only alternative land route from Benghazi to Tripoli winds for days through the Sahara desert, it may be sometime before most of the international press can witness whatever desperate battles are occurring between the government and the opposition in the capital. So far, only the New York Times has a reporter sending dispatches out of the capital. But Libya's revolutionary volunteers will no doubt do their best to get us there, as Omar, my airline pilot host, promised me. "As soon as the airports open, I'll fly you to Tripoli myself," he says.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2055666,00.html#ixzz1F9MgOAOH
Passage to Benghazi: How to Enter Libya
Passage to Benghazi: How to Enter Libya
By Andrew Lee Butters / Benghazi
Anti-government demonstrators work in what they called "Free Libya" broadcast station in Benghazi February 26, 2011.
Asmaa Waguih / Reuters
There's a not-so secret password that gets foreign journalists coming from Egypt into Libya through customs and immigration without showing passports and through the neighborhood militia checkpoints on the coastal road from Tobruk west to Benghazi. Flash the "Victory" sign with two fingers, and as long as you are in Free Libya, the eastern half of the country controlled by the democratic opposition to the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and you'll get saluted right back and then hurried along your way.
Opposition supporters in eastern Libya are making every effort to battle the tight controls that the government has put upon information coming out of Libya, claiming that the media blackout hides the crimes and killings the government has committed against its own people. From taxi drivers offering free rides, and average citizens offering food and lodging, to the new revolutionary committees setting up press centers, Libyans have welcomed the international media with open arms, and almost everyone has a message they want to get out to the world. "You can't believe how happy I am to meet an American reporter," says Omar, an airline pilot from Benghazi, who took me to his home so I could have a warm place to write, made me lunch and played me country-western music. "The government was massacring us and there was no one here to see," he says. (See why Gaddafi's fall might not bring peace to Libya.)
After the uprising against the Gaddafi regime started, the government shut down access to the Internet, blocked international phone calls out of the country, jammed satellite phone signals, and even forced people leaving the country from the western border crossings to Tunisia to erase their photographs and mobile phone videos of the protests. On Friday, the regime flew a very small number of journalists into the capital city Tripoli, located in western Libya and still the center of government's military and security apparatus, for a brief one day-long tour of the city. One journalist reported being assaulted by a pro-Gaddafi street marcher, who quickly apologized. The government also declared that any journalist inside the country not on the approved tour would be considered to be a member of al-Qaeda.
But in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and the epicenter of the uprising, the new revolutionary government is treating journalists not like terrorists but as brothers-in-arms. English-speaking volunteer translators have thronged to a new media center housed in the soot-stained former appeals court building, which days ago had been the scene of a battle between opposition supporters and the remnants of Gaddafi's security forces in Benghazi. Inside, young men have set up computer workstations to make press passes for anyone who shows a foreign passport. They are also designing anti-Gaddafi posters and caricatures, and preparing to distribute much more sobering images depicting what they say is evidence of crimes against humanity by the Gaddafi government.
On Friday, at the Benghazi revolutionary committee's first press conference, Peter Bouckert, the emergencies director of Human Rights Watch who is part of a two-person team in the city, said that the opposition's claims are justified. He estimates that at least 300 people died violently in Benghazi during the uprising, based on actual body counts from hospitals and morgues. "It's a very conservative figure, and it's going to rise as the investigation continues," he said. "What happened here was much more serious than what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. We are talking about the government using live ammunition in a systemic campaign against peaceful demonstrations. There's also pretty clear evidence of the use of heavy weapons including anti-aircraft guns, which were turned against the people. The results were pretty horrific." (See how Gaddafi is holding on tightly to his leadership role.)
Meanwhile, the city's new government — led by a 13 member council of lawyers, judges and professors — wanted to reassure the world that the uprising was committed to democratic principles and that there would be no need for foreign military intervention. What Libya needs, said Hafiz Ghoga, the council's spokesman, was short-term humanitarian assistance, an international freeze on assets belonging to the Gaddafi family, and a no-flight zone to keep the whatever's left of the air force from turning on the people. "There is no mess in Libya except where the regime is still in power," said Ghoga.
But besides Tripoli, one critical area that remains in the control of the regime is Sert, Gaddafi's hometown, located about midway on the 700 mile costal road from Benghazi to Tripoli. Because Sert may be among the last of Gaddafi strongholds to fall, and because the only alternative land route from Benghazi to Tripoli winds for days through the Sahara desert, it may be sometime before most of the international press can witness whatever desperate battles are occurring between the government and the opposition in the capital. So far, only the New York Times has a reporter sending dispatches out of the capital. But Libya's revolutionary volunteers will no doubt do their best to get us there, as Omar, my airline pilot host, promised me. "As soon as the airports open, I'll fly you to Tripoli myself," he says.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2055666,00.html#ixzz1F9MgOAOH
Why Did Burma's Leader Appear on TV in Women's Clothes?
Why Did Burma's Leader Appear on TV in Women's Clothes?
General Than Shwe, right, greets guests at the 64th anniversary of Union Day Saturday on Feb. 12, 2011, in Naypyitaw, Burma
Khin Maung Win / AP
General Than Shwe of Burma, the dour and taciturn leader of one of the world's most repressive military regimes, isn't known for his feminine side. His contempt for pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is rooted in part, most Burma analysts say, to the fact that she is a woman.
And so many Burmese were baffled earlier this month when Than Shwe and other top generals, appearing at a nationally televised ceremony, shed their dress uniforms for the Burmese equivalent of women's dresses. "I don't understand why the generals were wearing women's [sarongs] but they looked very weird," said a Rangoon mechanic, Myint Oo. Others put a more sinister spin on the generals' sartorial selection. "It's yadaya," said a Rangoon-based astrologer who asked not to be named, referring to Burma's particular brand of black magic. (See pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi.)
Burma has had three rulers during the past half-century and all have been devotees of yadaya. Gen. Ne Win, who ruled from 1962 to 1988 reportedly shot his own reflection in a mirror, on the advice of a fortune teller, to foil a foretold assassination attempt. His obsession with numerology led him to demonetize all bank notes in 1987 so new notes could be printed — all divisible by his lucky number nine. The move wiped out the savings of most Burmese and contributed to an uprising one year later. His successor, Gen. Saw Muang, was replaced after erratic behavior that included a rambling, semi-coherent nationally televised speech brimming with references to magic and astrology. The man who replaced him, Than Shwe, is reported to have seven personal astrologers, several of whom are tasked with focusing solely on Aung San Suu Kyi, according to his biographer Ben Rogers.
Astrology, superstition and black magic are common in Southeast Asia, and Burma's rulers have rarely made any bones about their beliefs. But, in what appears to be an attempt to tamp down on all the talk over Than Shwe's television appearance, state-controlled media outlets have now denied access to Internet pages showing him attending the Feb. 12 ceremony for the national holiday Union Day. "I suspect that the Union day web page is being blocked precisely because there is speculation over whether Than Shwe is performing yadaya," says Ingrid Jordt, an anthropologist and specialist on Burma at the University of Wisconsin.
According to Wai Moe, a journalist with the Irrawaddy, an online magazine run by Burmese exiles, two interpretations of the the general sporting a ladies' sarong have gained the most currency. The first is that astrologers have predicted a woman will rule Burma, and so by donning women's clothes, Than Shwe and the other generals are attempting to fulfill the prophecy through some superstitious sleight of hand. The second, fuzzier interpretation, is that by dressing in women's clothing, the generals are somehow trying to neutralize Suu Kyi's power. After Than Shwe brutally suppressed an uprising led by Burmese monks in 2007, anti-regime activists launched a campaign asking people to send women's underwear to the leader because they said the generals believe that contact with women's underwear will sap their power. By wearing sarongs, they may believe they are cancelling out Suu Kyi's ability to sap what they view as the virile male power that underpins their leadership. (See TIME's top 10 elderly leaders.)
If this train of thought doesn't appear to follow logic, it is, after all, superstition. And these stories have circulated in Burma before, particularly about former intelligence chief Gen. Khin Nyunt, who was also said to have dressed as a woman to counter the power of Suu Kyi. Though these theories appear to be widely believed in Burma, the nation's rulers almost never give interviews, so they remain unconfirmed.
What isn't hard to confirm is that less than four months after releasing Suu Kyi from her latest term of house arrest, the regime's attitude towards the Nobel Peace Prize winner is once again hardening. After Suu Kyi recently reconfirmed her support for economic sanctions against the regime, a state-run newspaper ominously warned last week that she and her followers would meet a "tragic end." She and her supporters have little reason to think they're bluffing: In 2003, a government-organized mob attacked Suu Kyi and her followers in northern Burma, killing dozens.
Burma held elections in November 2010 to try and put a democratic face on a country controlled by its military. But Than Shwe's notions of leadership are known to be based more on divine rule than democracy, and Jordt says his choice of dress that day may instead have to do with the fact that the patterns of some women's sarongs are based on patterns worn by Burma's royalty more than a century ago. "Than Shwe is simply trying to dress in the style of bygone kings. Than Shwe's evocation of royal politics asserts a very Burmese and Buddhist idea about what the terms of political legitimacy are,'' Jordt says. She added that, for some time now, Than Shwe has required that royal courtly language be used in reference to him and his wife, Kyaing Kyaing. (Read more about superstition and politics in Burma.)
If the other generals who joined their boss that day have any reservations about wearing women's sarongs, they aren't saying, lest they end up a victim of one of Than Shwe's periodic purges, as happened to former intelligence chief Gen. Khin Nyunt in 2004. Whether he's a reincarnated Burmese king, or just another old drag queen, Than Shwe's subordinates know it's never wise to cross Burma's cross-dressing senior general.
TIME
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi: The new face of Libyan defiance
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi: The new face of Libyan defiance
Colonel Gaddafi's son was educated in London and has friends in the City and Westminster. Or he did until last week
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, speaks to the media last week. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
Geneva places a high premium on guarding secrets, but rumours are a different currency. Amid momentous scenes being played out across the Middle East last week, sources in the Swiss financial centre were privately gossiping about a visit to Geneva earlier this year by Farhat Bengdara, the governor of the Central Bank of Libya.
According to one popular rumour, Bengdara had visited Geneva with a purpose. He was there to make changes to key Swiss accounts, into which flow hundreds of millions of dollars of Libyan oil money that are then allocated to the Libyan Investment Authority and the Libyan Central Bank.
Financiers in Geneva gossip that, as far back as 17 January, Bengdara established that four new names would be added as signatories on three crucial accounts controlling much of the money. The signatories were Colonel Muammar Gaddafi; his son Khamis, who heads Libya's infamous martyrs' battalion; the Libyan leader's daughter Aisha; and his son Saif al-Islam.
Where Libya's petro-dollars may have been channelled in the weeks since tensions first erupted across the Arab world is hard to say. But those who know him would be surprised if Saif did not hold the answers.
The westernised 38-year-old, who studied at the London School of Economics and enjoys close friendships with senior British politicians and financiers, has become the focal point of the conflict now threatening to rip Libya apart.
Whereas Gaddafi senior has always been seen in the west as a dictator – albeit one brought back into the fold – Saif, a trained architect who established a medical charity and was considered his father's heir apparent, held out the promise of a new dawn.
As far back as 2002, Saif told an interviewer that Libya needed democracy. "It's policy number one for us. First thing democracy, second thing democracy, third thing democracy," Saif said, using a rhetorical technique he was to repeat last week to far more sinister effect.
With mercenaries flooding the streets of Libya's major cities and horrifying stories of murder and mayhem emerging in piecemeal fashion via social networking sites, despite a government-enforced news blackout, such a promise now looks spent.
Saif's desire to act as a mouthpiece for his father has lent the tragic scenes unfolding in Libya a surreal, sometimes ridiculous dimension. His appearances in front of the television cameras suggest a man increasingly unhinged. Arms folded, jaw firmly out, Saif is a manifestation of defiance. It is clear he is very much his father's son, albeit, as one Twitter user wryly observed, someone who seems to have styled himself sartorially on Stringer Bell, the drug lord in the US cop show The Wire.
The similarities may not stop there. A man who reportedly likes to keep tigers and falcons, "Saif is urbane, charming and psychotic", according to one person who has met him. This appraisal seemed to be confirmed last Sunday night when Saif appeared on domestic television to threaten a civil war in which his father's regime "will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet".
By Thursday he was on CNN promising that the violence in his country would make Libya "stronger, more united". Saif pledged: "Libya will have a better future as one united nation. [We will] not let a bunch of terrorists control our country and our future."
Displaying a hubris that is likely to be replayed in video clips for years to come, Saif boasted that his family had a "Plan A, Plan B and Plan C". But all of the plans, it transpired, were the same: "To live and die in Libya."
These were the fulminations of a man whose options were increasingly limited. It was a far cry from 2008 when, having collected his doctorate from the LSE, Saif pledged to donate £1.5m to the university for a global governance unit. "I've come to know Saif as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration," Professor David Held, a political theorist at the LSE, said at the time.
Last week, while the university was reconsidering its links to Saif as a "matter of urgency", Held too was reappraising his former pupil. "My support for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was always conditional on him resolving the dilemma that he faced in a progressive and democratic direction," Held said. "His commitment to transforming his country has been overwhelmed by the crisis he finds himself in. He tragically, but fatefully, made the wrong judgment."
Whether others, however, will be quick to break their ties remains to be seen. Saif's connections extend into the City of London and Westminster.
Saif is an acquaintance of Lord Mandelson and met the former Labour minister at a Corfu villa the week before it was announced that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, would be released from a Scottish prison. The two men met again when they were guests at Lord Rothschild's mansion in Buckinghamshire.
Rothschild's son and heir, Nat, also a close friend of Mandelson, held a party in New York attended by Saif in 2008. Saif in turn invited Nat Rothschild to his 37th birthday party in Montenegro, where the financier is investing in a luxury resort.
Prince Andrew, too, has played host to Saif at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and the two men have also met in Tripoli. Others whom Saif classes as good friends include Tony Blair and, bizarrely, the late Austrian far-right leader, Jörg Haider.
On Friday night, at the end of a week in which hundreds are believed to have died and Saif's credibility in the west evaporated, the man whose name means "Sword of Islam" in Arabic appeared delusional. "Everything is calm," Saif told a group of foreign journalists who had been invited to the Libyan capital.
"If you hear fireworks, don't mistake it for shooting," Saif added, smiling as he greeted the press outside a luxury hotel boasting a glittering lobby and chandeliers. But the calm was unnatural. It was the quiet of empty streets that would normally be bustling on a Friday night.
Saif insisted that much of the reporting was "lies" spread by a hostile media and denied claims his father's forces had bombed civilians. "We are laughing at these reports," he said, urging reporters to interview "hundreds or thousands" of people for themselves.
"The biggest problem is the hostile media campaigns against us. They want to show Libya is burning, that there is a big revolution here," he said. "You are wrong. We are united. Peace is coming back to our country."
A few miles away the thousands of desperate migrant workers besieging Tripoli airport, kept out by police using batons and whips, told a different story.
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