“Europe wants to use Libya as its Berlin Wall to divide Africa from Europe.”
Read it here
Tag: libya
La structure tribale en Libye : facteur de fragmentation ou de cohésion ? – Fondation pour la recherche stratégique
Mohamed Ben Lamma.
http://ift.tt/2y9Ks3t
Qadhafi never disappoints
Saudi’s King Abdullah walks out of opening session of Arab Summit:
“Doha: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz walked out of the opening session of the Arab Summit in Doha on Monday, following remarks made by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Tempers flared shortly after the summit host Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, ended his opening address, in which he said King Abdullah will represent the Arab nation at Thursday’s G20 economic summit in London.
‘He is in fact the best representative any one could have,’ said Shaikh Hamad. The Arabs should be part of the restructuring of the global financial system, he said. ‘We should not sit on the sidelines watching.’
Following the speech, the Libyan leader took over the microphone without requesting a permission to speak, a Gulf News correspondent inside the meeting hall said.
‘I don’t know why we should be happy that King Abdullah is representing us at the G20. He is a British-made monarch and an American agent,’ Gaddafi said, and went on despite the repeated attempts by Shaikh Hamad to stop him.
Frustrated over the attempts by the Emir of Qatar to stop his from talking, Gaddafi looked at the rest of the Arab leaders and said: ‘I am the King of African Kings, I am the prince of the faithful and I don’t think my international prestige would allow me to sit with people like you.’
The remark and the subsequent apology by the Emir of Qatar led to an angry walkout by King Abdullah, who few years earlier had a similar spat with Gaddafi. “
Bonus pics [Thanks Diana]:
And to think once he was handsome:
Links February 4th to February 5th
Automatically posted links for February 4th through February 5th:
- The Experiment in Gaza — In These Times – Argues blockade is about breaking the Pals’ backs
- Bernard Kouchner – Profiled in the NYT, a bit silly at times but interesting
- The Strangulation of Gaza – The Nation on how Israel decided to put, in Dov Weiglass word’s, Gaza on a diet
- Israeli Apartheid Week 2008 – Official site of movement, events across the world
- Annals of National Security: A Strike in the Dark – Hersh on the disinformation campaign around Israel’s raid on Syria
- Libyans advance in Al Qaeda network – Because people tend to forget that over half of Arabs are in North Africa
Links January 29th and February 3rd
Automatically posted links for January 29th through February 3rd:
- Qatar reports new damage to Gulf undersea cables – Fourth time in a week – I think there’s a conspiracy afoot
- Libya Sovereign Wealth Fund to Shun U.S., Ghanem Says – Qadhafi puts his country’s money elsewhere
- Ezzedine Choukri: “?? ???? ????? ?? ????? ???? ??? ?” – Rafah episode shows current situation is losing one for all
- The path of centrist political Islam by Khalil Al-Anani – Al-Anani says MB hopeless, Wasat way forward
- Robert Fisk: The curious case of the forged biography – Fisk, hagiographer of Saddam Hussein
- Making a Great Arab City – I like this Rami Khouri piece on Dubai even though I am skeptical, because it praises the tradition of Arab cosmopolitan urbanism
- Arab Media Watch Arab Media Watch > Home – UK outfit combats anti-Arab bias in press
- Hamas explodes a giant hole in Egypt’s political cover – Op-ed takes Egypt’s hypocrisy on Palestine to task
- It’s time to herald the Arabic science that prefigured Darwin and Newton – Faraday prize winner defends historic Arab scholarship
- For sale: West?s deadly nuclear secrets – Whistleblower says top US officials sold nuke secrets to Pakistan (the person is not named in the article, but others say it’s Marc Grossman)
- Al-Jazeera Journalist Arrested in Egypt – Howeida Taha arrested, again
- AFP: Egypt censors book fair – Mohammed Choukri, Milan Kundera, Elias Khoury, Hanan al-Sheikh censored from Cairo Book Fair.
Links January 9th and January 10th
Automatically posted links for January 9th through January 10th:
- ??????? ???? ????? ????? ?????? ?????? ?«?????» ??????? – Egypt cuts subsidies on food oils, etc.
- 151,000 civilians killed since Iraq invasion – WHO, Iraq Gov says revises death tool (1/4 that of Lancet)
- Has the Era of Cheap Oil and Food Prices Ended? – Walid Khadduri addresses top question in many Arabs’ minds
- Can the Middle East sustain democracy? Middle East Strategy at Harvard – Debate on Arab democracy – Alterman, Dunne, Carpenter, etc. in comments
- La rééducation des terroristes d’Arabie saoudite – Jihadi re-education: to do jihad, make sure the Saudi Gov says it’s OK
- US candidates are vague on Middle East democracy – Steven Cook examines — Edwards has most concrete plans
- Jacob?s Jottings: The Case of Fouad Ajami The National Interest – Another Ajami takedown, this time on his newfound Huntingtonism
- Rehabilitating Libya – International Herald Tribune – Op-ed reminds of Libya’s nastiness — or does it not count when victims are not Western?
- Democracy: inevitable no more – M. Albright on democracy, but she was never a supporter of Arab democracy
- Saudi Calls on Sarkozy to Visit Alone – After some in Egypt were outraged by Sarko’s new girlfriend, Saudi draws the line
Links for 12-18 December
Automatically posted links for December 12th through December 18th:
- Democracy Digest – Newsletter on democracy developments in Arab world and elsewhere, current issue has article on MB
- BBC World Service | ‘Free to Speak’ Events – Is new media the only truly independent media in the Arab world today?
- GWOT: Egypt – Negar Azimi on Egypt and the “Global War On Terror”
- Islamist calls for boycott of Egypt billionaire – “An Islamist shaikh on Monday called for a boycott of the companies of telecommunications billionaire Naguib Sawiris for speaking out against the influence of Islam on public life in Egypt.”
- YEARENDER: In Egypt, unrest will spill over into 2008 – corrected : Middle East World – In the last few months of 2007, Egypt has experienced a series of massive workers strikes, motivated by none other than poor standards of living and lack of privileges, foreboding the beginning of a possible “uprising” by Egypt’s poor.
- Incumbent Regimes and the ?King?s Dilemma? in the Arab World: Promise and Threat of Managed Reform – Carnegie report says political stagnation seen as more likely outcome if regimes not serious about reform
- Arab Reform Bulletin: December 2007 – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Beyond the Fa̤ade: Political Reform in the Arab World РNew book by Carnegie Endowment
- Le Monde.fr : Le 10 était parfait pour le colonel Kadhafi – On Qadhafi’s visit to Paris coinciding with international human rights day
- Anthropologists on the Front Lines – TIME – TIME looks at debates in academic community about Human Terrain Teams
- The Press Association: Army chief among Beirut blast dead – Michel Suleiman successor killed
Creative destruction in Libya
Oil Wealth Fuels Gaddafi’s Drive For Reinvention:
TRIPOLI, Libya — Brother Leader Moammar Gaddafi still exhorts his people to greatness from billboards, banners and murals. But these days a different kind of command is driving Libya’s transformation as the newly opened country taps into oil wealth: “izala,” Arabic for “raze it to the ground.”
Surveyors are spraying the word in red paint up and down Libya’s Mediterranean coast. The orange-vested road crews are tagging for demolition the old Libya — low-rise, stucco Libya, sleepy under decades of Gaddafi’s socialist economy and international sanctions.
To rise in its place, Gaddafi’s officials say: the increasingly capitalist Libya, with new buildings for the country’s new stock exchange. Airports to ferry in and out a dreamed-of annual flow of 30 million oil workers, tourists and other travelers. The world’s second-largest port after Singapore. Railways. Highways. Hospitals. Schools. Luxury beachfront hotels.
Libyans and Westerners here cite a statement attributed to Gaddafi: Libya must destroy in order to rebuild.
This Muammar al-Gaddafi: every few years he gets some grand idea, forces it onto everyone for a while and then his ministers finally convince him maybe it’s not the best way to do things. In this case, though, I’m sure a lot of foreign contractors will be very happy about his grandiose visions.
Tony Blair, the dictators’ sharmouta
Tony Blair on the recent allegations that Saudi Prince Bandar pocketed a $2 billion commission on an arms deal with BAe:
“This investigation, if it had it gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations in investigations being made into the Saudi royal family,” Blair said at a meeting of the Group of Eight nations in Germany.
He added that, “My job is to give advice as to whether that is a sensible thing in circumstances where I don’t believe the investigation incidentally would have led anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship for our country. . . . Quite apart from the fact that we would have lost thousands, thousands of British jobs.”
This a week after Tony Blair heaps praise on the regime of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya as a major oil deal is signed with BP.
Corruption, the Arab world’s number one export. In fact when you think about it, between the Arabs’ petrodollars and the Israelis’ various mafias (diamonds, ecstasy, weapons, etc.), this region is probably the world’s nexus of sleaze.
Update: This story has more details on the Bandar-BAe-Blair scandal. And a note: sharmouta is Arabic slang for slut or whore.