Gadaffi captured/killed

[kendal mint cake]

Stop talking bollocks, seriously.

[David]

(I know you can't mention them, but there is a 1 hour documentary on Al Jazeera tonight about that group in your sig, mickey, should be interesting.)

Fuck, I don't get Al Jazeera on Virgin Media. I hope it's on their website tomorrow.

[big mickey]

(I know you can't mention them, but there is a 1 hour documentary on Al Jazeera tonight about that group in your sig, mickey, should be interesting.)

Fuck, I don't get Al Jazeera on Virgin Media. I hope it's on their website tomorrow.

 

Expect a fair & unbiased show

 

As the sky synopsis says:

 

"English 'till I die: Al Jazeera looks at the violent world of Britain's new far-right as supporters of the ******* ******* ****** provoke disorder in racially-sensitive areas"

 

[David]

(I know you can't mention them, but there is a 1 hour documentary on Al Jazeera tonight about that group in your sig, mickey, should be interesting.)

Fuck, I don't get Al Jazeera on Virgin Media. I hope it's on their website tomorrow.

Expect a fair & unbiased show

 

As the sky synopsis says:

 

"English 'till I die: Al Jazeera looks at the violent world of Britain's new far-right as supporters of the ******* ******* ****** provoke disorder in racially-sensitive areas"

 

You don't think that description sounds about right?

[big mickey]

I think they should allow the viewer to form their own opinions

[King Pitcos]

I think they should allow the viewer to form their own opinions

How?

[big mickey]

I think they should allow the viewer to form their own opinions

How?

 

No, your right, it'll be impossible to have a fair understanding of what will be a clearly biased show.

 

Want a fair one? Watch that Channel 4 Coppers episode

[big mickey]

I'm big enough to admit when I'm wrong.

And I was.

 

It was more of a displeasure towards the government rather than being an all out focus on the, certain group..

 

I give them credit for showing the aggression of other groups, however that Lowkey rapper guy came across like a monumental dickhead.

 

The little bit on Muslim Soldiers was good, but too brief sadly.

[Keith Houchen]

Yeah it was a good watch, as you say a bit scattershot but certainly balanced. It was surreal seeing Nick Griffin saying to people "They are with Al Jazeera, you'll have to watch Al Jazeera"

 

Yeah that rapper was a cock but with a name like Lowkey, what did you expect

[David]

It would appear that our very own Prince Charles thought Gaddafi was a cool dude;

 

The Prince of Wales praised Muammar Gaddafi and told him he was "heartened" by the way relations between Libya and the United Kingdom were developing in a letter to the former dictator, it has been reported.

 

Heir to the throne Charles wrote to the deposed leader on June 7 2007, calling him "Your Excellency" and commending his work with Christians and the British Council, according to The Times.

 

Royal sources said the letter, sent on the advice of the Government, was aimed at helping secure the release of six Bulgarian medical workers who were falsely imprisoned in Libya for infecting children with HIV.

 

Referring to finding a "satisfactory" solution for the families of the affected children, the Prince wrote: "I have no doubt that this will have a further positive impact on the friendship between our peoples."

 

The five nurses and one doctor, who served eight years of their life sentences and always maintained their innocence, were released in late July 2007 following years of international negotiations.

 

The letter, typed on Clarence House note paper, was written the week after a visit by the then prime minister Tony Blair and was found in a palace belonging to Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, The Times said.

 

Charles wrote in the correspondence that he had been briefed on Mr Blair's visit and on "the positive way" in which relations between Libya and the United Kingdom were heading.

 

He added: "I just wanted to write to Your Excellency to say how heartened I am by the breadth of these developments."

[bobbins]

Brilliant article here from Seamus Milne.

 

 

If the Libyan war was about saving lives, it was a catastrophic failure

 

As the most hopeful offshoot of the "Arab spring" so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That's not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Gaddafi, courtesy of a Nato attack on his convoy.

 

The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton's reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an investigation.

 

As the reality of what western media have hailed as Libya's "liberation" becomes clearer, however, the butchering of Gaddafi has been revealed as only a reflection of a much bigger picture. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Gaddafi's last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed

[David]

An excellent article there Bobbins, cheers.

 

Also, for anyone interested, here's a copy of Gaddafi's last speech;

 

For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Ronald Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

 

I did all I could to help people Understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

 

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

 

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism" ,but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer.

 

So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters.

 

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

 

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stoop up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light.

 

When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

 

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

[big mickey]

That's a shockingly high number in such a short time!

 

Pretty powerful stuff from Gadaffi there too

[Loki]

There is some scary stuff in that article, no doubt.

 

The thing is, though, what we've essentially seen over the last few years is a direction change in Western foreign policy. Since the 2WW there was generally a trend to support what were seen as "benign" dictatorships where they could be relied upon to protect the flow of oil in their countries and not wage war generally, whilst smiting those who openly and actively opposed Western values. This highly cynical approach bought America and Britain no fans in the repressed populations of the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

It also created the "enemy within" in terms of some of those dictators supporting terrorism on the fly. So now the approach is to actively push Western values (democracy and capitalism) into any country where the population seems to want it enough, and hope that the commonality of politics will ultimately make those countries into allies.

 

Whether this works any better than the last policy, remains to be seen.

[Vice]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-2012...-in-libya-grow/

 

Signs of ex-rebel atrocities in Libya grow

 

(CBS News)

 

In Libya on Tuesday, the body of Muammar Qaddafi was buried in an unmarked grave at a secret location. Like many revolutions, the end of this one was bloody.

 

There are questions about how the rebels dealt with both the dictator and hundreds of others. CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reports that the question of whether rebel fighters executed Qaddafi is still under investigation. So far, the new Libyan government has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of the matter.

 

Nearly 300 bodies, many of them with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head, have been collected from across Sirte and buried in a mass grave. The new government has been slow to confront allegations of atrocities by rebel fighters, despite repeated calls for them to do so.

 

"You have to bear in mind that these young man have seen their friends killed in front of them, who saw their cities burned, who saw their sisters raped. I am amazed at their self-restraint," said Ali Tarhouni, oil minister.

 

The evidence indicates that little restraint was shown.

 

There are no names in one graveyard, only numbers: 572 so far and counting. That's because the graves hold the bodies of alleged mercenaries. Most were killed in the fighting, but local officials freely admit that some were summarily executed.

 

The governor of a prison in Misrata thinks that amounted to justice.

 

"There was no mercy for foreign mercenaries," Sheikh Fathie Dariez said.

 

The nearly 500 prisoners he holds seemed well treated, but this man said that in another jail he had been brutalized. He said they beat him because they assumed he was pro-Qaddafi.

 

Libya's new rulers are at risk of being accused of the same kind of abuses they fought to overthrow.