“The papers, discovered in the British ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli, raise new and damaging questions over Britain’s role in the seizure and torture of key opponents of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. Britain is already facing legal actions over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who is now the military commander in Tripoli, and his deputy, Sami al-Saadi. Both men say they were tortured and jailed after being handed over to Gaddafi………. The cache of confidential documents – which included private letters to Gaddafi from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and key Downing Street aides – was abandoned when the three-story residence was attacked by Gaddafi loyalists in April. ……… London only designated the LIFG a terrorist organisation after Libya said it was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. The move is understood to have been agreed as part of the negotiations with Gaddafi’s regime that paved the way to the controversial Blair deal……….”
I have no doubt now: Tony Blair has been behind some of the most corrupt deals made by, for, or, in Britain in the past fifteen years. I think he ought t be renditioned somewhere, I am not sure where. Maybe North Korea, where hopefully we will never hear from him or of him again. But then again, he may cut a deal with Kin Jong-Il to become some kind of PR consultant or lobbyist.
“An analysis of video obtained by GlobalPost from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Muammar Gaddafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover. A frame by frame analysis of this exclusive GlobalPost video clearly shows the rebel trying to insert some kind of stick or knife into Gaddafi’s rear end. GlobalPost correspondent Tracey Shelton said there is some question as to whether the instrument was a knife from the end of a gun, which Libyans call a Bicketti, or a utilitiy tool known as a Becker Knife and Tool, which is popularly known as a BKT. This latest video discovery comes as international and human rights groups call for a formal investigation into how the former Libyan leader was killed…………..”
Another unpromising sign of a new Libya. Cheers
mhg
“With NATO bombing of Libya set to end, U.S. Sen. John McCain on Sunday raised the possibility of some kind of military attack on Syria, where the government of Bashar Assad has been accused of brutally cracking down on protesters. “Now that military operations in Libya are ending, there will be renewed focus on what partial military operations might be considered to protect civilian lives in Syria,” McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan. “The Assad regime should not consider that it can get away with mass murder. Kadafi made that mistake and it cost him everything.” There was no immediate response from the Assad government, which has blamed “armed groups” for the violence that has swept the nation since mid-March. ……….. Still, there is a school of thought that an impasse has been reached seven months into the protest movement and some kind of foreign intervention maybe the only way……….”
Foreign intervention? How about Chinese intervention? Or Iranian intervention? Are they as kosher as French intervention? Maybe McCain will join Sarkozy in leading a new Battle of Maysaloon to retake Syria.
The French reneged (along with the British) on their promise to the Arabs under the Hashemites of Hijaz after World War I. The Brits installed Faisal as King of Syria, only to see the French invade and kick him out to Iraq.Later on, the British allowed Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi forces to invade Hijaz and annex it to their Nejdi kingdom.Jordan and Iraq were the consolation prize. Cheers
mhg
News networks have been showing us macabre scenes of thousands of Libyans lining up, in long snaking lines, to see the mutilated body of their former dictator Colonel Qaddafi. Reminds me of the long lines of thousands of people in the United States of Europe who wait in line on the day a new iPhone or iPad comes out. No reports if any Libyans camped out overnight near the frozen food storage facility to be the first to see th Islamistseir erstwhile leader. Meanwhile, the family of Mu’ammar Qaddafi have asked for his body, something they should be granted. Islam requires respect for the body of the dead, not mutilation and public exposure. Meanwhile the Libyan people are waiting for their next leader(s): be they democrats, kleptocrats, or Islamists. Possibly a mix of all of the above with less of the ‘democrats’ and more of the kleptocrats and fundamentalists, if the ruling Arab potentates have anything to do with it. And the ruling Arab absolute monarchs are set to have a big say in what kind of government the Libyans will have: not a good start. Cheers
mhg
I watched Hillary Clinton with Amanpour on ABC. She was asked about al-Migrahi, of the Lockerbie bombing, now that Qaddafi, the recent friend of the West has been killed and mutilated by the new rulers of Libya. She said the al-Migrahi should be returned, that “We want him back“as well. Yet the U.S. and British and possibly other governments were in on the deal to release him. After all, not only British petroleum interests were involved, but also American business interests. Tony Blair was an adviser to JP Morgan which wanted a deal to invest for the Qaddafi regime. Then there was the “settlement” for a lot of Libyan money. Now Mrs Clinton has a sudden case of selective amnesia, she who shook hands with that regime. Regardless of the merits of the case against al-Migrahi, how can a person agree to a deal then renege on it?
I also watched Fareed Zakaria (CNN) with Ahmadinejad in Tehran (well, switched between that and an NFL game). He asked the Iranian president about political prisoners in Iran. He practically denied that there are political prisoners in Iran, but was not convincing (very hard to convince people of something when they know one is lying, no?). That is almost as bad a lie as saying there are no political prisoners in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. Cheers
mhg
The hypocrisy of some Arab opinion-ators, quasi-intellectuals, and faux-liberals (both the Wahhabi and non-Wahhabi variety) has been breathtaking. This is especially true in the Gulf region where many take their cue and their orders from absolute monarchies. Just look at how they treat events in the Arab Spring these days, and go back a few years.
Most Arab states ‘of the east’, and all the GCC Gulf states, supported the American-British invasion of Iraq in 2003. In fact they actively supported it (I supported it inactively at the time). Yet as soon as the “wrong” kind of regime emerged in Baghdad, they all turned against it, calling them “puppets”. Admittedly they are now too fundamentalist in Iraq for my taste, but then our whole region is heading that way, if only temporarily. They certainly are not nearly as sectarian or as fundamentalist in Iraq as they are in Saudi Arabia (almost nobody in the world is). Most Arab so-called ‘intellectuals’ and opinion makers still claim to be sour about Iraq, but they are not sour on their own governments for enabling it. But then we all wish sectarianism would just vanish. (Warning: maybe I’ll start my own ‘sect’ and have everyone else join me. I promise that I’ll not use witchcraft. Sorcery and magic will be seriously frowned upon).
Now to Libya. Many, possibly most, of the very same Arab opinion-ators were eager for the West, for NATO, to intervene in Libya. Their concern was admirable: to save Libyan civilians from the dictator and his henchmen. Yet Saddam had killed many more Iraqis, and others, during his rule than Qaddafi, than anyone else in modern Arab history. They accepted (actually pushed for it) American, British, and French forces to fight against Qaddafi even as they complained about American and British forces intervening in Iraq.
The hypocrisy is not confined to one party or one sect. It works for all sides. Some who are against the Syrian uprising strongly support the Bahrain uprising. Some who are strongly against the Bahrain uprising strongly support the Syrian uprising.
This idiotic shaikh from my hometown here tells his listeners that Qaddafi was not a Muslim and that it is not allowed to pray over him. No R.I.P. for him. Too many of these idiotic Salafi television shaikhs giving fatwas on everything. I call them MTV shaikhs, some call them mercenary shaikhs, others call them opportunistic shaikhs on the make. They are all of the above. They are the products of all these Shari’a colleges on the Gulf, and in Saudi Arabia, that spawn thousands of semi-educated would be clergy. They get competitive, and the only way to compete for a Salafi shaikh is to issue his own fatwas on everything under the sun. They ought to be licensed (and preferably immunized and leashed), if you know what I mean.
Saudi network Alarabiya reports that the Libyan rulers (NTC) have decided to bury the corpse of Mu’ammar Qaddafi in an unmarked grace in an unknown location. This is (at least) the second public atrocity committed by the new rulers. The first one, as I wrote here yesterday, was to allow the wounded and captive dictator to be tortured and killed. I wrote that he should have been tried, as Saddam was tried in Iraq for three years. I also speculated that killing Qaddafi was convenient escape for some of Libya’s current leaders and for many Western leaders who dealt with him, for a price. Now making Qaddafi’s body vanish is another atrocity, another unnecessary act. Saddam Hussein’s grave is known and marked, and it has not caused him to come back to life. A dead body, no matter who had occupied it, deserves some dignity, one of many things the new rulers of Libya apparently need to learn after 40 years of dictatorship.
All this is a worrisome sign for the “New” Libya: it resembles what happened in Iraq when the Ba’athists (and their allies) first took over. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
I watched the grisly, nay ugly, savagery in the footage of Mu’ammar Qaddafi in captivity: at first wounded but very much alive, then dead naked and being dragged about. There is no way he was shot while trying to escape, but that is alright now, everyone wants the new Libya to start with a ‘clean’ slate. Nobody wants the new Libya to start with the usual extra-judicial atrocities that the old dictatorship committed. Which brings me to the new ‘regime’, which will be what it is until a ‘proper’ government is elected by the people. That is why most Arab regimes are ‘regimes’: unelected, possibly unelectable, and I don’t mean just the republics. Now this killing of Qaddafi also helps the National Transitional Council clean its own slate, given that many of its members served in high positions under Colonel Qaddafi. It saves a lot of embarrassing and inconvenient court testimony by Qaddafi and his lawyers and witnesses. A lot of local names to be talked about: who did what under Qaddafi. With the dictator dead, there is no need to embarrass anyone. Then there is no need to embarrass Western leaders who dealt with the dictator and helped him, for a price of course. (I wonder what Berlusconi and Sarkozy and Tony Blair and many others feel now). Saddam Hussein was tried for three years before being executed. (I recall the media in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain thought that was extra-legal, as if their own regimes care much for legal niceties: in both these countries people vanish without legal niceties, sometimes forever). But then the new Iraqi government was mostly composed of former exiles and not composed of his former officials. Nobody to embarrass with court testimony. Cheers
mhg
BFF
“The scrublands that surround Moammar Kadafi’s hometown have become a confused patchwork of loyalties. As vehicles of the revolutionary forces patrolled the dusty villages in newly seized territory Sunday, many residents peered angrily from their homes. “The rebels are worse than rats. NATO is the same as Osama bin Laden,” said a father, his seven children crowding around him. Surt has been a primary target in the seven-month NATO bombing campaign that helped rebel forces gain control of most of Libya. The intensity of the bombing, coupled with recent rocket attacks by the opposition forces, has turned Surt into a “living hell,” several families said. Hundreds of families fled the city Sunday, anticipating a new assault. But too frightened, angry or mistrustful to flee to opposition-controlled territory, many sought refuge in nearby loyalist homes……….” The new Libyan rulers, or rather their NATO and other allies, have so far failed to dislodge the Qaddafi side from Sirte (or is it Surt) and Bani Walid. Apparently Bani Walid was a near disaster for the new Tripoli government. There are also other towns and villages and regions that are still contested in the vast Libyan desert. Neither Bani Walid nor Sirte have turned into the decisive OK Corral that the NTC and world media expected it to be. The Clantons are still fighting, the Earps are trying, and Doc Holiday NATO is getting frustrated. Told ya: Arab dictators and depots, be they royal or military, are very hard to dislodge. Bin Ali and Mubarak were surprised by the speed of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, but the others were ready. From Libya to Syria to Yemen to Bahrain to Algeria, even to Saudi Arabia, the oligarchs were ready when the Arab Spring spread toward their neck of the woods. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF
