February 22, 2011
Where's Obama on Libya?
Yes, I understand that any statement from the president in support of the revolutionaries in Libya would be detrimental to their cause. Gaddafi would point to Obama's support as evidence that it isAmerica and the west who are behind the trouble.
So leave the revolutionaries out of it. How about using some of that famous rhetorical skill to gut Gaddafi for his murderous actions?
Surely if you can decry violence in America, you can damn well muster the outrage to condemn in the strongest possible language this wrenching tragedy unfolding in Libya. Helicopters are gunning people down in the streets and the best you can do is send a State Department flak out to mutter nonsensical diplomatese? We might expect this kind of behavior from a Libyan ally, not the leader of the free world.
The Libyan ambassador to the US is begging for a stronger statement from Obama:
"I want the U.S. to tell the world and to work with the countries who love peace...they have to stop this," Ambassador Ali Ojli said, suggesting that he had resigned his post, in an interview with Al Jazeera English.
"I would never ask us to intervene physically in Libya," he said, but called on the Obama Administration to "take a strong position that what's happening in libya must be stopped now...and to avoid giving the impression to the Arab world that the West "has only a materialist mind -- they don't care about human rights...except when it comes to their own interest.""You see them raising their voices about iran ... because they have some interest in in Iran.... When it comes to other countries they don't raise their voice," he said, adding that the Arab and Muslim world won't "trust america or the west if they behave that way."President Obama urged restraint in a written statement Friday on Libya and two other countries, but he hasn't appeared on television to talk about the crisis.
Did Obama take the weekend off? The revolutionaries in Libya didn't. While they were getting slaughtered in the streets of Benghazi, the First Lady was skiing the slopes in Vail while the president was busy sending his minions to Wisconsin to support public employee unions in their quest to bankrupt the state.
Perhaps we should have a lesson in priorities here. While Obama was urging his purple shirts onward, women and children were jumping off of bridges in Benghazi to escape hired goons from Chad who fired indiscriminately into the crowds. Doesn't that rate a trip to the press room and a call for all nations to condemn in the strongest possible terms this brutal, inhumane crackdown on unarmed people?
Want to know what is really and truly wrong with this president? He is passionless. His "cool" demeanor masks a lack of engagement with the world around him. His professorial mind never appears to get a shot of adrenaline or any other brain chemical that would animate his words, stir his soul, or demonstrate any emotion at all. We have yet to see any outrage from this man except when someone criticizes him.
He bollixed up Egypt but good. Now he's fiddling while Libya burns. I tremble to think of this man as president beyond 2012. We'll be lucky to avoid a war or suffer some kind ignominious foreign policy disaster.
Ohhh it is a great post! I really like it! (smile)
ReplyDeleteOnce Marx wrote about the Napoleonic state: “‘The bourgeois order has turned into a vampire which sucks out its blood and brains and throws them into the alchemist’s vessel of capital.”
ReplyDeleteBP and Shell must see the Libyans’ blood spilled and brains of the people scattered in the streets, these are parts of your capital, hurry up and call on your leaders in the West to stop the killing. Irony does not keep any limit. Politics and economy are fused together in the same brutal style of vampirism.
Now is the time for international action not only international condemnation
UN: implement an immediate no-fly zone
Issue an arrest warrant for Gaddafi
Journalists, start talking about this more and more. Ask our politicians for action. Tell them that Libyans are calling for a no-fly zone (but no troops on the ground)
We must not stand idly by.
Salaad: UN: implement an immediate no-fly zone. Issue an arrest warrant for Gaddafi
ReplyDeleteThe UN? You're joking, right? They are more likely to issue arrest warrants for the fleeing oil derrick workers for their war crimes against Mother Gaea. They're using bullets the size of your hands on civilians, but it's Muslim-on-Muslim violence, so the UN doesn't care, and Barry is skiing.
Obama looks more and more like the un-president, at the most kindly, Presidential-Light.
ReplyDeleteGaddafi will end up in the streets in a Mussolini moment.
ReplyDeleteI have to believe that the bigger loser in all this is al Qaeda.
ReplyDeleteQaddafi has few options for a retirement home. He's unwelcome in Saudi, and I don't think Libyans are offering a Sharm Al-Shaikh option ala Mubarak.
ReplyDeleteDoctor in Libya: "We are seeing wounds produced by weapons that I don´t think have been used against human beings before."
ReplyDeleteBarry will probably come out with a statement urging restraint on the part of protesters, lest they perpetrate the cycle of violence. But anything would be welcome at this point. Right now he's just voting present.
Concerns are growing that radical Islamic terrorism may return to Egypt after the fall of Mubarak. Around 17,000 people escaped from nine Egyptian prisons in the chaos during the revolution in the first half of February. Hundreds of them were affiliated to radical Jihad Islamic groups.
ReplyDeleteBy Mohammed Abdulrahman, RNW's Arabic editor in Cairo
Egypt’s biggest Islamic groups, al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, and Tanzim al-Jihad, both denounced violence some time ago. However, a number of their members rejected the initiative to abandon violence, and many of them have now escaped from prison.
Former vice-president Omar Suleiman has warned that many dangerous terrorists may be on the loose. The US government is also concerned by the development.
State of emergency
These fears have been compounded by the appearance of convicted terrorist Sami Shihab, who escaped from prison in Egypt ten days ago, next to a leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Naserella, at a public rally in Beirut this week. Shihab, who is Lebanese, was sentenced to life-imprisonment in Egypt after being convicted of planning terrorist attacks in that country.
Another reason for the fears is that the Egyptian State Security Intelligence Agency, which is charged with preventing terrorism, failed to stop the recent mass protests in Cairo. A number of violent radicals are benefitting from the relaxed atmosphere currently prevailing in Egypt. If the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces lifts the state of emergency imposed 30 years ago, as it promised, it could give the radicals even more opportunity to regroup.
Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya has already held its first ever public meeting in the south of Cairo, where it organised peaceful celebrations following the revolution.
New democracy
Nevertheless, not everybody agrees that Egypt is likely return to the violent politics of the past. Abul Ila Madi, a moderate Islamist leader of al-Wasat Party, argues:
“The vast majority of 1990s Jihadists abandoned violence a long time ago. No group of any significance is in favour of violence now. The Egyptian people who stood up to keep law and order in the absence of police, have gained new confidence and will not allow any group to drag us back to violence. Furthermore, the brutal repression of radical Islamists was one of the reasons for the violence. This will disappear with the formation of a new democracy.”
Dr Hilmi Sha’rawi, a secular left-wing researcher, says:
“These kinds of fears are part of American and Western attempts to use Islam and Islamists to scare us and the rest of the world. There is no reason for fundamental Islamists to return to violence and terrorism in the new democratic Egypt. And now the Egyptian people are capable of preventing this.”
Era of violence
He also dismisses the notion that the state intelligence agencies have been weakened. According to him, the Egypt state and its intelligence agencies are still intact and are capable of operating at both a national and international level.
“The era of violence is behind us,” says Issam al-Arian, a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. “The radical Jihad groups should have learnt their lesson now. Our people proved that change is possible by peaceful means. Violence will not return to Egypt.”
It is unlikely that the Jihad violence of the 1980s and 1990s will return. However, the fundamentalist Jihadists were not fighting for democracy and human rights. They wanted to establish an Islamic state, and have always considered democracy an alien concept and a sign of western political and cultural domination. As long as these ideological elements exist, it would be too optimistic to simply rule out the possibility of Jihad violence.
Israel is more likely to receive condemnation for building a house than Ghaddafi is for slaughtering 500 people.
ReplyDeleteTeresita said...
ReplyDeleteIsrael is more likely to receive condemnation for building a house than Ghaddafi is for slaughtering 500 people.
wow the 1st honest thing you have said about israel in years, and we all know you will be one of the many supporting the UN's condemnation of Israel for home building.
SF May Ban Infant Circumcision <---good luck, that's a religious freedom
ReplyDeleteI can't get too het up about whether Obumbles is "passionate," or disinterested about who comes out on top in a melee in which he has no possible 'input.'
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are the ones scaring me. Global oil "Exports" are on an irreversible decline, and the Pubs are fighting all of our possible mitigating technologies as hard as they can.
Now might be a good time to get out of the stock market. This is looking more, and more like 2008 on jets.
TOKYO - North Korea recently took the unusual step of begging for food handouts from the foreign governments it usually threatens.
ReplyDeleteAs noted in
ReplyDelete"The Looming Tower"
Al-Queda was born in Egyptian prisona.
I have no doubt that "Democracy" in Egypt plus the MB will bring
Everlasting Peace on Earth.
(EPOB) PBUH
How to Smoke Out the Democrats:
ReplyDeleteRick Perry puts the squeeze on parasitic democrats...
In 2003 Texas Democrats fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma, in a rented bus. Now, Governor Rick Perry sent the Texas Rangers after them.
And the Democrat governor of Oklahoma would not allow the Texas Rangers to cross into his state.
So Governor Perry informed those Democrats that they would not be allowed to use their state credit cards to pay for their trip, nor would they be reimbursed for their expenses in Oklahoma, including the bus that took them there.
Once the runaway Democrats in Texas realized that they had to pay their own way that was the beginning of their caving in and coming back home.
So I'm wondering if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has thought of pulling the plug on the credit cards of the runaway Democrats. 'Cause make no mistake, I'm sure they have them.
I mean if we're gonna have welfare debit cards, you know damn well that members of the state legislature have a state credit card as well. He-he-he-he.
- Limbaugh
A more immediate threat to our national security and the economy, Rufus, is the near total kibosh the Dems have put on domestic oil production, and farming, industry, and for profit business in general.
ReplyDeleteIn the last two years of Obama we given up five strategic bottlenecks, count ‘em:
ReplyDelete1. The Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's oil flows. The Iranians have dug in very deep with ship-targeting missiles on their side of the Strait, and it will be like Iwo Jima to get them out of there.
...
2. The Suez Canal, thereby putting pressure on the Mediterranean.
3. Somalia and the Atlantic bulge of Africa, where Somali pirates (protected by the Islamist forces in Somalia) are still free to blackmail world shipping.
4. Israel and its more peaceful Arab neighbors --- Lebanon, Egypt, and soon, perhaps, Jordan.
5. The missile flight routes from Iran to Europe.
Ahmadinejad Advances
Writing in his Journal of the Researches published on his return to London, Darwin described how the Chilean earthquake felt.
ReplyDelete"A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid - one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced," he wrote.
...
No matter how much New Zealanders accept that they live in a geologically active region, and that earthquakes are a part and parcel of their country, nothing can fully prepare them for the shock and tragic aftermath of an earthquake of this scale and magnitude.
Darkest Day
By early yesterday, the streets of Tripoli were reportedly quiet. ''There is heavy rain at the moment, so people are at home,'' one Tripoli resident told Reuters.
ReplyDeleteOil prices have soared over the instability in Libya, an important producer of oil and gas, which account for more 90 per cent of the country's income.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said it was ''time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed''. European Union foreign ministers condemned the killing of protesters and pledged to support democratic transition resulting from the unrest.
Supporters Desert
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ReplyDeleteMother-of-two Sana attended the Melbourne rally with her husband and children to show support for relatives and friends still living in the north African nation.
ReplyDelete...
Iranian Saman Krimi joined the rally to show solidarity with people standing up against dictatorships in the region.
"The most important thing for me this time is the people that want to change and are actively trying to change using their own power," he said.
Libyan Protesters
Libya's UN Ambassador Mohamed Shalgham spoke to the Security Council about the protests along with B Lynn Pascoe, UN under-secretary-general for political affairs.
ReplyDeleteMr Shalgham arrived at the meeting separately from his deputy ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, who has called for Mr Gaddafi to stand down and requested today's meeting.
...
"(Mr) Gaddafi is my friend. I can criticise him but I cannot attack him," Mr Shalgham said.
Libya Meeting
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ReplyDeleteThe Cause and Effect of Mindful Leadership
ReplyDelete"A mindful leader leads from a position of mindful awareness, or mind strength, by knowing how to respond from awareness instead of reaction and how to make everyone on their team feel recognized, affirmed and valued. Mindfulness provides you with clarity and calm in a crisis, protecting you from the temptation to panic and jump from one bad situation to another or to blame others for the crisis and avoid looking at your role in it; plus it gives you the power to change it. Mindful communication is an extraordinary tool for problem solving. It allows you to tolerate the discomfort of confrontation with others and the embarrassment of discovering how you might have contributed to the problem. Mindfulness also allows you to find your creativity and resourcefulness, so that you can approach the situation differently and perhaps transform it. It helps you to easily tap into your core creativity to solve problems and achieve goals."
Bond prices rose, pushing yields lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.55 per cent from 3.59 per cent late on Friday.
ReplyDeleteMarkets were closed on Monday for the Presidents' Day holiday.
News on the economy was mixed. An index of consumer confidence rose to its highest point in three years, but home prices in a majority of cities tracked by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index fell to their lowest levels since the housing bubble burst.
Libya Protests
23.24 Peru suspended diplomatic ties with Libya on Tuesday, becoming the first nation to take such a measure.
ReplyDeleteThe Oyster Seduction
ReplyDeleteI love oysters. Bookmarked it. Thanks, Mel.
ReplyDeleteEmanuel elected mayor.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHere's a great salmon marinade recipe for you, Mel:
ReplyDeleteSALMON MARINADE RECIPE
1/4 cup peanut oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
3/4 teaspoon gratedginger
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's claim last night that he would stay in Libya and die a martyr's death, rather than flee into exile, is the surest sign yet that he has deep concern for his future in the country he has ruled from behind an extravagant cult of personality for almost 42 years.
ReplyDelete...
Uprisings across the Middle East have created an exciting time for the region. But it is not without anxiety.
...
There are tests for the west too: balancing a foreign policy agenda and the lust for the region's oil with an acknowledgement that now, more than ever, the Middle East must be allowed to chart its own peaceful future.
Tired of Script
Emanuel elected mayor with 110% of precincts reporting.
ReplyDeleteHow many in that extra 10% deceased?
ReplyDeleteSam, it's more Democratic that way.
ReplyDeleteGaddafi is about to get his, well, better late than never.
ReplyDeleteObama/Bush scores, again!
What's Gaddafi's son doing the news, anyways?
ReplyDeleteI thought Reagan took him out with a F-111 strike on his tent years ago.
He must've made more little gaddafi jr's after that.
ReplyDeleteThe one from the air strike was adopted, not sired by the Colonel.
ReplyDelete(Reuters) - Pirates shot dead four US hostages on a private yacht on Tuesday, the deadliest incident involving Americans kidnapped for ransom in the increasingly dangerous waters off Somalia.
ReplyDeleteI think the yacht was manned by fuzzy-headed 2nd Amendment-hating Wikileaks types trying to catch the US Navy at "genocide". Funny thing is, ALL the Israeli ships, civilian or otherwise, are fully armed in that area of the world, and they have NEVER been boarded by pirates.
ReplyDelete"We express our deepest condolences for the innocent lives callously lost board the Quest," said Gen. James N. Mattis, U.S. Central Command Commander in the statement.
ReplyDeleteScott and Jean Adam had joined Blue Water Rallies in Dec. 2010 to travel through the area in the security of a group.
"Ironically, after more than (six) years of roaming the globe together, they joined our rally for the added security we could offer through the Gulf of Aden," read a statement from Blue Water Rallies Limited, which was posted on their website Tuesday morning. "Sadly, they did not get that far as the pirate activity has spread out across the Indian Ocean at an alarming rate over the past few months."
Friends Want Response
thanks sam that actually sounds really good
ReplyDelete