Libya Next

Gaddafi who is think used to be spelled Qaddafi is possibly trying to run to Venezuela, a rumor he refuted tonight in Tripoli with an umbrella:



Why should he be worried? He's shooting directly into peaceful protests and losing his own government out from under him:

"What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead," Adel Mohamed Saleh said in a live broadcast on al Jazeera television. "Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car, they will hit you."

...

A group of army officers issued a statement urging fellow soldiers to "join the people" and help remove Gaddafi.

The justice minister resigned in protest at the "excessive use of violence" against protesters and diplomats at Libya's mission to the United Nations called on the Libyan army to help overthrow "the tyrant Muammar Gaddafi."

...

Two Libyan fighter jets landed in Malta, their pilots defecting after they said they had been ordered to bomb protesters, Maltese government officials said.

...

The demonstrations spread to Tripoli, on the Mediterranean Sea, after several cities in the east, including Benghazi, appeared to fall to the opposition, according to residents.

Human Rights Watch said at least 233 people had been killed in five days of violence, but opposition groups put the figure much higher.

...

A coalition of Libyan Muslim leaders told all Muslims it was their duty to rebel against the Libyan leadership because of its "bloody crimes against humanity."

The building where the General People's Congress, or parliament, meets in Tripoli was on fire on Monday, as was a police station in an eastern suburb, witnesses said.

Even the Libyan ambassador to the U.N. has pledged allegiance to the people, not the dictator and his family. Per Juan Cole, the cost is high:

I am watching Aljazeera Arabic, which is calling people in Tripoli on the telephone and asking them what is going on in the capital. The replies are poignant in their raw emotion, bordering on hysteria. The residents are alleging that the Qaddafi regime has scrambled fighter jets to strafe civilian crowds, has deployed heavy artillery against them, and has occupied the streets with armored vehicles and strategically-placed snipers. One man is shouting that “the gates of Hell have opened” in the capital and that “this is Halabja!” (where Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered helicopter gunships to hit a Kurdish city with sarin gas, killing 5000 in 1988).

This is what pisses me off about Americans who don't bother to exercise their right to vote.

Sharpen those meathooks.

How Big is Africa?

Plenty big.



Bigger than you thought?

Mugabe Wins

The result of this past week's war on democracy by fascist Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe has been the withdrawal of his electoral rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, from the dubious run-off set for the end of this week. Said Mr. Tsvangirai:

...he could neither participate “in this violent, illegitimate sham of an election process,” nor ask his voters to risk their lives in the face of threats from forces backing President Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe's government has said "win or war" and war it has been:

A governing party militia blocked his supporters from attending a major rally in Harare on Sunday, the head of an election observer team said. The opposition said rowdy youths, armed with iron bars and sticks, beat up people who had come to cheer for Mr. Tsvangirai.

It was the latest incident in a tumultuous campaign season in which Mr. Tsvangirai has been repeatedly detained, his party’s chief strategist jailed on treason charges that many people consider bogus, and rampant state-sponsored violence has left at least 85 opposition supporters dead and thousands injured, according to tallies by doctors treating the victims.

With the neighbors step up?

Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision to quit the race seems intended to force Zimbabwe’s neighbors to take a stand. There are growing cracks in the solidarity that African heads of state have shown for Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero whose defiant anti-Western rhetoric has long struck a resonant chord in a region with a bitter colonial history.

The United States and Britain are pressing to put Zimbabwe’s political crisis on the United Nations Security Council agenda on Monday, a step South Africa, the region’s most powerful nation, has consistently opposed.

So South Africa et al are standing idly by while the thug class has been unleashed in classic totalitarian fashion:

Mr. Tsvangirai, a charismatic former trade union leader who has been Mr. Mugabe’s hated rival for almost a decade, charged Sunday that the president’s violent, vengeful strategy had displaced 200,000 people, destroyed 20,000 homes and injured and maimed over 10,000 people in what he called “this orgy of violence.”

That's how it works.

In a just world it'd be next stop, The Hague.

Horror

If I weren't so burnt by our regime change experience in Iraq, I'd say go the hell into Zimbabwe and arrest dictator Robert Mugabe tonight.

The New York Times has a terrifying article on his junta's death squads kidnapping , torturing, mutilating and murdering the peaceful political opposition and even just sympathetic voters in the lead up to next week's bullshit run-off election.

Check out the link but have a strong stomach. I can't even quote from it, it's too horrible. This is happening right now, more as I write this.

It's time for the neighboring countries in Africa to act like a continent and get that vicious 82 year-old criminal, and as many of his henchmen as possible, into retirement.

This should be on everyone's mind and discussed in the U.N. on Monday. This is a real battle for democratic rights, human rights.

Death to tyrants.