Archives for 2011

The LAT reports that the rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi’s 41-year dictatorship in Libya headed toward an end-game on Wednesday, as Misurata, the country’s third-largest city (pop. 600,000), fell to the opposition. Significantly, Misurata is in the west of the country, where support for Qaddafi had been stronger. It is only 100 miles east of the […]

If we begin at the eastern border of Libya with Egypt this morning and move west, we find the country is now divided in two, with the east largely in the hands of dissidents and the West still under the thumb of Qaddafi’s security forces. The border with Egypt is in the hands of the […]

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% […]

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 […]

After the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi fell to the protest movement on Sunday, clashes broke out in the Libyan capital of Tripoli late that afternoon, the first time that city saw substantial demonstrations. The events shook the rule of Muammar Qaddafi to the core, eliciting from one of his sons Saif al-Islam Qaddafi a […]

5. Dear right wing blogosphere and also Bill Maher: You can’t generalize about women’s position in Muslim countries based on a reprehensible mob attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan. Generalizing about a whole group of people based on a single incident is called “bigotry.” It is also a logical fallacy (for wingnuts challenged by six […]

Breaking News: Bahrain security forces appear to have run out of ammunition at the downtown Pearl Roundabout, as thousands of Shiite protesters flooded in Saturday morning. The demonstrators took the square and a festive mood settled in. The Wifaq Party, which had represented the majority Shiites in parliament until its members resigned en masse on […]