Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[Tyrones own]

Did fisk write that DH?...some chance!
Bit of a conversation stopper there lad

[Arthur_Friend]

Did fisk write that DH?...some chance!
Bit of a conversation stopper there lad

Really? In what way?

[theskull1]

Gaddafi's son on state television painting a very bleak picture of the potential outcomes if the unrest continues

Offers of reform mixed with hard threats against those who he terms as enemies of libya

Serious fear mongering and real sign of desparation

[Tony Baloney]

20 pages in and youse still haven't solved the Middle East conundrum. Get a move on lads...

[muppet]

20 pages in and youse still haven't solved the Middle East conundrum. Get a move on lads...

Aha, a clue. It was a puzzle all along:

Athiest Meddle
Dismal Teethed
Dead Thistle Me

[Tony Baloney]

20 pages in and youse still haven't solved the Middle East conundrum. Get a move on lads...

Aha, a clue. It was a puzzle all along:

Athiest Meddle
Dismal Teethed
Dead Thistle Me

It's no "David Ginola".

[Main Street]

Gaddafi's son on state television painting a very bleak picture of the potential outcomes if the unrest continues

Offers of reform mixed with hard threats against those who he terms as enemies of libya

Serious fear mongering and real sign of desparation

All the Irish Government have to do to make sure the citizens are compliant when robbing them blind, is threaten the citizens with dried-up ATM's.

[give her dixie]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/2011220232725966251.html

A son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has promised a programme of reforms after bloody protests against his father's rule reached the capital, Tripoli.

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi also hit out at those behind the violence. He said protests against his father's rule, which have been concentrated in the east of the country, threatened to sink Libya into civil war and split the country up into several small states.

Appearing on Libyan state television early on Monday morning, Seif al-Islam said his father is in the country and backed by the army. "We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet."

He said his father was leading the fight, although he added that some military bases, tanks and weapons had been seized.

"We are not Tunisia and Egypt,"  the younger Gaddafi said, referring to the successful uprisings that toppled longtime regimes in Libya's neighbours

He acknowledged that the army made mistakes during protests because it was not trained to deal with demonstrators but added that the number of dead had been exaggerated, giving a death toll of 84.

Human Rights Watch put the number at 174 through Saturday, and doctors in the eastern city of Benghazi said more than 200 have died since the protests began.

The younger Gaddafi offered to put forward reforms within days that he described as a "historic national initiative" and said the regime was willing to remove some restrictions and begin discussions for a constitution. He offered to change a number of laws, including those covering the media and the penal code.

He said the General People's Congress, Libya's equivalent of a parliament, would convene on Monday to discuss a "clear" reform agenda, while the government would also raise wages.

After Seif al-Islam's address, Najla Abdurahman, a Libyan dissident, told Al Jazeera: "He's threatening Libya and trying to play up on their fears. I don't think anyone in Libya who isn't close to the Gaddafi regime would buy anything he said.

"And even if there is any truth to what he said, I don't think it's any better than what the people of Libya have already been living with for the past 40 years. He promised that the country would spiral into civil war for the next 30 to 40 years, that the country's infrastructure would be ruined, hospitals and schools would no longer be functioning - but schools are already terrible, hospitals are already in bad condition.


His address followed reports that security forces had shot dead scores of protesters in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, where residents said a military unit had joined their cause.

There were also reports of clashes between anti-government protesters and Gaddafi supporters around the Green Square.

"We are in Tripoli, there are chants [directed at Gaddafi]: 'Where are you? Where are you? Come out if you're a man," a protester told Al Jazeera on phone.

A resident told the Reuters news agency that he could hear gunshots in the streets and crowds of people.

"We're inside the house and the lights are out. There are gunshots in the street," the resident said by phone. "That's what I hear, gunshots and people. I can't go outside."

An expatriate worker living in the Libyan capital told Reuters: "Some anti-government demonstrators are gathering in the residential complexes. The police are dispersing them. I can also see burning cars."

There were also reports of protesters heading to Gaddafi's compound in the city of Al-Zawia near Tripoli, with the intention of burning the building down.

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.

Protests have also reportedly broken out in other cities, including Bayda, Derna, Tobruk and Misrata - and anti-Gaddafi graffiti adorns the walls of several cities.

Anti-government protesters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi have reportedly seized army vehicles and weapons amid worsening turmoil in the African nation.

A local witness said that a section of the troops had joined the protesters on Sunday as chaos swept the streets of the city, worst hit by the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year old rule.

Mohamed, a doctor from Al Jalaa hospital in Benghazi, confirmed to Al Jazeera that members of the military had sided with the protesters.

"We are still receiving serious injuries, I can confirm 13 deaths in our hospital. However, the good news is that people are cheering and celebrating outside after receiving news that the army is siding with the people," he said.

"But there is still a brigade that is against the demonstrators. For the past three days demonstrators have been shot at by this brigade, called Al-Sibyl brigade."

The witness reports came on a day in which local residents told Al Jazeera that at least 200 people had died in days of unrest in Benghazi alone. The New York-based Human Rights Watch on Sunday put the countrywide death toll at 173. The rights group said its figure was "conservative".

[give her dixie]

Robert Fisk in Manama: Bahrain – an uprising on the verge of revolution

The protesters who are calling for an end to royal rule are in no mood to compromise

Monday, 21 February 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/robert-fisk-in-manama-bahrain-ndash-an--uprising-on-the-verge-of-revolution-2220639.html

Bahrain is not Egypt. Bahrain is not Tunisia. And Bahrain is not Libya or Algeria or Yemen. True, the tens of thousands gathering again yesterday at the Pearl roundabout – most of them Shia but some of them Sunni Muslims – dressed themselves in Bahraini flags, just as the Cairo millions wore Egyptian flags in Tahrir Square.


But this miniature sultanist kingdom is not yet experiencing a revolution. The uprising of the country's 70 per cent – or is it 80 per cent? – Shia population is more a civil rights movement than a mass of republican rebels, but Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa had better meet their demands quickly if he doesn't want an insurrection.

Indeed, the calls for an end to the entire 200-year-old Khalifa family rule in Bahrain are growing way ahead of the original aims of this explosion of anger: an elected prime minister, a constitutional monarchy, an end to discrimination. The cries of disgust at the Khalifas are much louder, the slogans more incendiary; and the vast array of supposedly opposition personalities talking to the Crown Prince is far behind the mood of the crowds who were yesterday erecting makeshift homes – tented, fully carpeted, complete with tea stalls and portable lavatories – in the very centre of Manama.

The royal family would like them to leave but they have no intention of doing so. Yesterday, thousands of employees of the huge Alba aluminium plant marched to the roundabout to remind King Hamad and the Crown Prince that a powerful industrial and trade union movement now lies behind this sea of largely Shia protesters.

Yet Crown Prince Salman talks more about stability, calm, security and "national cohesion" than serious electoral and constitutional reform. Is he trying to "do a Mubarak" and make promises – genuine ones for the moment, perhaps, but kingly pledges do tend to fade with "stability" and time – which will not be met?

In an interview with CNN, he acknowledged the Belfast parallels, exclaiming that "what we don't want to do, like in Northern Ireland, is to descend into militia warfare or sectarianism". But the crazed shooting of the Bahraini army on Thursday evening – 50 wounded, three critically, one already pronounced brain dead – was a small-size Bloody Sunday and it didn't take long for the original civil rights movement in Northern Ireland to be outrun by a new IRA. Clearly, the royal family has been shocked at the events of the last week. Sultan al-Khalifa's admission that "this is not the Bahrain I know, I never thought I would see the day that something like this would happen" proves as much. But his words suggest that this huge manifestation of public fury was merely provoked by television pictures of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. For the record, the Shia rebellion against the country's Sunni rulers has been going on for years, with hundreds of political prisoners tortured in four prisons in and around Manama, their tormentors often from the Jordanian army – just as many Bahraini soldiers come from the Punjab and Baluchistan in Pakistan. Yesterday, there were repeated demands for the release of political prisoners, banners carrying photographs of young men who are still in jail years after their original sentencing: they run into the hundreds.

Then there are the disturbing stories of the refrigerated trucks which reportedly took dozens of corpses for secret burial, perhaps in Saudi Arabia. These could be part of the carapace of rumour that has settled over the events of the past few days, but now some of the names of the disappeared – men who were present at the shootings near the Pearl roundabout last week – are known.

Twelve of their names have just been released. So where is 14-year-old Ahmed Salah Issa, Hossein Hassan Ali, aged 18, Ahmed Ali Mohsen, 25 and Badria Abda Ali, a woman of unknown age? And where is Hani Mohamed Ali, 27, Mahdi al-Mahousi, 24, Mohamed Abdullah, 18, Hamed Abdullah al-Faraj, 21, Fadel Jassem, 45, and Hossein Salman, 48? English residents of a nearby apartment block were warned before the shooting that if they took photographs of the soldiers, they would be shot.

Hassan Ali Radhi, the youngest of the 18 Bahrain Shia MPs, agrees that there is an increasing gap now between demonstrators and the official political opposition that is being sought out by Crown Prince Salman.

"We are waiting for an initiative from the Crown Prince," he told me. "He has not mentioned reform or constitutional monarchy and a fully elected parliament. If people have a properly elected government, including the prime minister, they will blame their representatives if things go wrong. Now, they blame the King.

"What we are suggesting is a removal of the barriers between the people and the ruling family. When Hillary Clinton came to Bahrain, I told her that we don't want to see the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain [its military headquarters] as an obstacle to change, but currently, Bahrain is the worst strategic ally for the US."

The head of the Alba factory trade union, Ali Bin Ali – who is a Sunni – warned that his members could go on strike if they wanted to. "Now that people have been shot down on the roads, we will be political," he said.

Which, of course, is not what the Crown Prince wants to hear.

[theskull1]

Tony I really struggle to understand your sarcastic comments

The civil rights marches here in the 60s would have benefitted massively from the internet in terms of giving them a voice on the world providing a better perspective on the issues and their demands rather than state tv getting most of the say beyond these shores

Why does folk commenting on the situation annoy you? If it was a meaningless soccer thread i could understand but this is global politics ffs

[Banana Man]

Tony I really struggle to understand your sarcastic comments

The civil rights marches here in the 60s would have benefitted massively from the internet in terms of giving them a voice on the world providing a better perspective on the issues and their demands rather than state tv getting most of the say beyond these shores

Why does folk commenting on the situation annoy you? If it was a meaningless soccer thread i could understand but this is global politics ffs

have to agree with Skull Tony, if you aren't interested in either side as you say, why not just ignore it, no one says they can solve it by discussing it but a lot of people are genuinely interested in the region and it's politics and the domino affect it could have through to the west.

[Minder]

I would say Jeffrey Donaldson is watching events unfold in Libya with a certain amount of trepidation.

[give her dixie]

I would say Jeffrey Donaldson is watching events unfold in Libya with a certain amount of trepidation.

As Jeffrey is a friend of mine on facebook, I went onto his page there to have a look and see if he had anything to say.
Someone had asked him about Libya, and what it meant for the compensation he is seeking, and this was his reply.

Jeffrey Donaldson Hi Chris, the legal team representing the victims have been in ongoing negotiation with the Libyan Government but to date, a settlement of the claims has not been reached. It is hard to say what the impact of the current unrest will be. ...If a new government were put in place, would they be more amenable to a settlement of the claims and to make money available to help the innocent victims of IRA violence? I think a lot will depend on the willingness of our own UK Government to give more support to the campaign. They must apply greater pressure for a settlement. If that happens then it is possible to acheive a successful outcome.See More
11 hours ago · LikeUnlike

[theskull1]

In 20 years will facebook have totally changed the meaning of the word "Friend"? 

[give her dixie]

If the news reports coming out of Libya are anything to go by, I can't see Gaddafi remaining
in power much longer. Possibly gone by the end of the week.