Gaddafi & family need to be hauled off to the Int'l Criminal Court and there be sentenced to hang

[the_future_modernes]

ETA: 4 more articles below Libya at a glance.

Libya is a former Roman colony situated in central north Africa. Its capital is Tripoli and its major language is Arabic.

It is bordered to the west by Tunisia and Algeria, to the east by Egypt and Sudan, to the south by Chad and Niger, and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea.

Its 2010 population was 6.5 million, according to the United Nations.

Libya's official name is Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

It was so named by its current leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who has also implemented a unique form of Islam in the nation. 'Jamahiriya' means 'state of the masses'.MORE

On to today's news, which isn't very good. WARNING: STRONG VIOLENCE

Al Jazeera Live Blog

This is a goddamn genocide. He is shooting at protesters from warplanes and helicopters OMFG WHUT??!!!!

8:20 am There have been multiple reports out of Libya that security forces there are using "high caliber" or "anti-aircraft" weapons against civilian protesters. We've seen video of Libyans holding spent rounds, both large and small, comparing the two for cameras. To get a sense of what high caliber really means, look at this photo:

The round second from right is standard 5.56mm - of the type used by NATO forces, as the photo illustrates. The round on the far left is .50 caliber and has reportedly been used against protesters. Sources in Tripoli who have spoken with doctors in the capital also said some believe explosive rounds are being used.

One blogger noted: "I had a discussion with my brother, who’s currently training in the police academy, about weapons that law enforcement/the military uses. Do you want to know what police departments who even have these bullets use them for? Immobilizing vehicles and shooting through walls ... These bullets are designed to shred things much tougher than the human body.

His support is peeling off, but enough remains for his apparent aim to scorch the earth and go down in infamy. Via stoneself Colonels defect to Malta rather than bomb protesters as per orders


Meantime: 7:07 am Libya's deputy UN ambassador has called on the longtime ruler to step down. The Libyan ambassador to the US says he can no longer support Gadhafi; the ambassador to India plans to resign, and the ambassador to Bangladesh has quit to protest the killing of family members by government troops.

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6:31 am More than 200 very vocal protesters are demonstrating at the Libyan embassy in Kuala Lumpur. The Libyan Ambassador says he has realigned himself with the people of Libya and is supporting the demonstrators.

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2:00 am A group of Libyan army officers have reportedly issued a statement urging fellow soldiers to “join the people” and help remove Gaddafi from power
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12:59 am Financial Times reports oil groups are preparing to shut down operations in Libya


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12:30 am Further reports that Libyan border guards have abandoned the eastern border with Egypt


In this article Libyan pilots and diplomats defect:Group of army officers have also issued a statement urging fellow soldiers to "join the people" and help remove Gaddafi. Al Jazeera gives more information about the diplomats defecting and their requests of teh international world. Guys? Its past time that the international community come up with some way to intervene when genocides and massacres on this level start happening in a country.

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The Guardian Live Blog

Is reporting that the Libyan navy is now bombing a residential area

...8:49pm After the apparent defections earlier in the day of two jet figher pilots who landed in Malta, he, [twitterer Sultan Al Qassemi] has also picked up on reports that military pilots have landed in the Libyan city of Benghazi after refusing orders to bomb it.


9:19pmThis could be a particularly ominous development however. Libyan airspace has been closed, the Austrian Army is saying.One of its transport planes, with some 60 European Union citizens onboard, is believed to be stranded in Tripoli at the moment.
"The entire airspace is currently blocked," an Austrian Defence Ministry employee told the German Press Agency dpa.

9.22pm: A prominent Egyptian cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has called for a fatwa against Muammar Gaddafi.He made a public statement tonight that any Libyan soldier who has the opportunity should shoot and kill the Libyan leader.


And I was really hoping that twitter last night wasn't true damn it. 12:45am

A Libyan man who spent a number of years in the UK before five years ago to his home city said that the people were now largely control of Benghazi and that the army had fled.

More than 350 people have been killed, he said, while adding that this death toll did not include the grim discovery made inside the army garrison headquarters by those who entered it following its surrender.

"We found 150 corpses burning and we believe they were the bodies of officers and soldiers who refused to follow orders to fire on the the people," he said.

Yesterday, reports came of powerful tribes leaving the regime: Gaddafi's son in civil war warning:Appearing on Libyan state television, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi says his father is in the country and has support of army.

Meanwhile the head of the al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya has threatened to cut off oil exports unless authorities stop what he called the "oppression of protesters", the Warfala tribe, one of Libya's biggest, has reportedly joined the anti-Gaddafi protests.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Shaikh Faraj al Zuway said: "We will stop oil exports to Western countries within 24 hours" if the violence did not stop. The tribe lives south of Benghazi, which has seen the worst of the deadly violence in recent days.

Akram Al-Warfalli, a leading figure in the Al Warfalla tribe, one of Libya's biggest, told the network: "We tell the brother (Gaddafi), well he's no longer a brother, we tell him to leave the country." The tribe lives south of Tripoli.MORE

and from the live blog

11:54 pm: Further reports suggest the 500,000-strong Tuareg tribe in south Libya has heeded the call from the million-strong Warfala tribe to join the uprising. Protesters in Ghat and Ubary, home to Libyan Tuareg clans are reportedly attacking government buildings and police stations.

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Meantime lets learn a bit about his second son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, who is apparently commanding at least one of the forces being used to try to put down the rebellion, and made a ridiculous speech last night.
The Guardian Live Blog strikes again:

11.59pm: It appears from the role played tonight by Saif al-Gaddafi that the Libyan dictator's son is destined to play a key role in whatever events shape Libyan history in the days ahead.An Anglophile who studied a the London School of Economics, his strong connections to Britain will no doubt be of great interest to many.

12.10am: You can read a profile of Saif, written by the Guardian's Middle East Editor, Ian Black, here.

2009:

Saif is an Anglophile and well-connected in Britain. He studied at the London School of Economics and contributed £1.5m to its centre for the study of global governance. Last month he reportedly bought a £10m house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, in north London. In the summer he met Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, at the Corfu villa belonging to the Rothschild banking family. He is also said to be close to Prince Andrew and has been a regular speaker at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

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Back home, the 37-year-old engineer is seen as the voice of Libya's younger generation, born, like him, after the 1969 revolution his father led and still embodies. He created National Youth Day — by chance or design the very day he escorted Megrahi home. MORE

I suppose in the end he chose loyalty to his Dad?

The weapons that the Libyan leader is using to oppress his people, BTW are British:

UK firm defends Libya military sales: NMS International sold armoured vehicles – which have allegedly been used to quell demonstrations – to Libyan regime

One of the British firms heavily involved in selling military equipment to Libya has defended its business practices. NMS International has sold armoured vehicles to the Libyan regime which have allegedly been used to quell demonstrations.

The firm, based in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, has also been training the Libyan police on how to control riots. It has organised delegations of British companies to visit Libya to sell a wide range of military equipment at two arms fairs.MORE

Britain cancels Bahrain and Libya arms export licences: Troops from the Gulf state also took training courses at Sandhurst and other military colleges
The government has revoked 44 licences for the export of arms to Bahrain amid concern over the suppression of anti-government protesters.

Eight licences authorising arms sales to Libya were also revoked amid a review of exports to the wider Middle East including Yemen.

The licences are thought to cover items that could be used for repression, such as teargas. The Foreign Office said it had no evidence of British equipment being used in the unrest in Bahrain.

Alistair Burt, the minister for the Middle East and north Africa, said that an immediate review of UK export licences was being conducted as a result of the changing situation in Bahrain.

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Separately, the Guardian has learned that the Ministry of Defence has helped train more than 100 Bahraini military officers in the past five years at Sandhurst and other top colleges in the UK.

It has provided places to troops from the Gulf state on junior officer training courses for the British army, RAF and Royal Navy and the joint services advanced command and staff course. It has also deployed short-term teams to Bahrain to deliver specific training. The MoD said it provided "advisory visits, defence staff talks and senior leadership engagement either in the UK or in-country". The close involvement of the British government with Bahrain's military emerged amid claims that troops shot live ammunition at protesters on Friday afternoon, and fired warning shots with anti-aircraft weapons.MORE

Tony Blair linked to arms trade with Libya

Tony Blair helped to secure defence contracts worth £350m and the promise of more as part of the deal with Libya that allowed the Lockerbie bomber to return home.

The deals were signed during his meeting with Colonel Gadaffi in May 2007, when the then prime minister agreed to a prisoner transfer deal between the two countries. The disclosure has led to renewed accusations that the Labour government entered into a “terrorist for trade” agreement.MORE

Juan Cole gives more info on Libya:

Revolutionary Situation in Libya

Because Libya is an oil state that exports 1.7 million barrels a day, its fate has more immediate implications for the international economy than unrest in non-oil states such as Tunisia. On Sunday, the eastern Zuwayya tribe threatened to halt petroleum exports in protest of the brutality of the regime in Benghazi, a city of over 600,000.
Petroleum accounts for much of Libya’s $77 bn. a year gross domestic product, the 62nd in the world, which affords Libyans a per capita income on paper of over $12,000 a year, more than that of Brazilians, Chileans or Poles and the highest in Africa. In fact, the oil income is not equitably distributed, so that a third of Libyans live below the poverty line and 30% of workers are unemployed. The regime favors the west of the country with oil money largesse, neglecting the east. [Which is why the revolution started there]MORE

The Gates of Hell have opened in Tripoli

Qaddafi’s strategy is an Iraq 1991 gambit, where Saddam Hussein remained in power after the Gulf War by deploying his Republican Guards tank corps and helicopter gunships against civilian crowds in Najaf, Basra and elsewhere. In Iraq, this strategy was successful in part because the Sunni officers knew that if the protest movement succeeded, the Shiite religious parties would come to power and subject the Sunni Arabs. The Iraqi armor and helicopter pilots therefore remained loyal to Saddam, and succeeded in their repression.<br ></a><br />Qaddafi does not have a similar ethnic divide to help shore up the loyalty of his officer corps, though of course he has advantaged some tribes and groups more than others. His massacre on Monday seems to have created a split in the Libyan elite around him, with key diplomatic personnel resigning and some military men defecting.PDF on how Gaddafi governs at the link

Qaddafi’s Bombardments Recall Mussolini’s

The strafing and bombardment in Tripoli of civilian demonstrators by Muammar Qaddafi’s fighter jets on Monday powerfully recalled the tactics of some decades ago of Benito Mussolini, who spoke of imposing a ‘Roman Peace’ on Libya.
In 1930, under Mussolini’s governor of Libya, Rodolfo Graziani, some 80,000 Libyans were removed to concentration camps, where 55% of the inmates perished. In 1933-1940, Italo Balbo championed aerial warfare as the best means to deal with uppity colonial populations. Between 1912 and 1943, half of all Libyans were killed, starved or chased from the country by the Italian colonial regime.MORE

A grubby Libyan lesson in realpolitik

Another week, another revolution. Muammer Gaddafi of Libya may soon become the third Arab president to be swept from power in little more than a month.

Until a few years ago, his toppling would have been greeted with delight in western capitals. But in recent years, the Libyan leader has been recast as a reformed sinner, an ally in the “war on terror” and a valued business partner. His current travails should be a cause of justified embarrassment – not least in London – since Britain has led the way in the attempted rehabilitation of Col Gaddafi.

Changing attitudes to the colonel highlight the way in which western concern over human rights is almost always coloured by convenience. In the 1980s, the Libyan leader was regarded as the foremost state sponsor of terrorism and rightly denounced for his dreadful human rights record. Ronald Reagan called him a “mad dog” and the US bombed Tripoli in 1986. Saddam Hussein of Iraq, by contrast, was largely tolerated because he was useful in containing Iran.

When the US decided it needed to topple Saddam, his ghastly human rights record received much more attention. By contrast, the cruelty of Col Gaddafi’s regime has been downplayed in recent years. As the US and the UK searched for a retrospective justification for the war on Iraq, Libya’s renunciation of weapons of mass destruction was seized upon as convenient evidence that the Middle East had changed for the better after the Iraq war. In 2004, Tony Blair visited Libya and hailed Col Gaddafi as a partner in the “war on terror”. British business followed in the prime minister’s wake and lucrative oil contracts were signed. In 2008, Condoleezza Rice became the first US secretary of state to visit Libya since the 1950s. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/adb0edd2-3e07-11e0-99ac-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1EgOmqFEd">MORE

Comments

[badgerbag]

Bunch of broken html in there, worth fixing if you have the time! I'm reading it and thank you very much for the overview!

[the_future_modernes]

Fixed!