March 2011

Top ten ways that Libya 2011 is not Iraq 2003

by News Sources 03.23.2011

Juan Cole writes: Here are the differences between George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the current United Nations action in Libya: 1. The action in Libya was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. That in Iraq was not. By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense [...]

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The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.22.2011

The Guardian reports: Britain, France and the United States have agreed that Nato will take over the military command of the no-fly zone over Libya in a move which represents a setback for Nicolas Sarkozy, who had hoped to diminish the role of the alliance. Barack Obama agreed in separate phone calls with Sarkozy and [...]

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The danger of binary thought around the issue of Libyan intervention

by News Sources 03.22.2011

Rory Stewart writes: If the crises of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, which have consumed more than 100,000 lives, four trillion dollars and absorbed a million foreign soldiers from 60 countries, have not made us more prudent, they should at least have made us wiser. For two decades our policies in these countries have been [...]

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For or against the war in Libya? Neither

by Paul Woodward 03.22.2011

The war in Libya did not begin on March 19. That should not be forgotten because after 112 cruise missiles slammed into Libya’s air defense sites that day and the phrase “shock and awe” started getting tossed around once again, the implication for many observers was that Western intervention in Libya marked the beginning of [...]

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BBC Panorama: Fighting Gaddafi

by News Sources 03.21.2011

Marwan Bishara writes: Make no mistake about it, the battle over Libya did take a turn for the worse with the international intervention to protect the Libyan people and impose no-fly zone among other measures. The ongoing bombardment is and will remain a controversial subject that has already been criticised by the Arab league. Further [...]

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The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.21.2011

The New York Times reports: As the military operation continued over Libya on Monday, there was some confusion about which country or organization is actually leading it, and for how long. France, Britain and the United States are in charge of their own operations, which each have different code names. The participants are being “coordinated” [...]

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Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declaration of solidarity with the Arab democratic revolution

by News Sources 03.21.2011

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Gilbert Achcar on the Western intervention in Libya

by News Sources 03.21.2011

The Washington Post reports: Buoyed by U.S. and allied airstrikes that relieved a siege of Benghazi, Libyan rebels launched an offensive early Monday aimed at retaking the strategic city of Ajdabiya, as Western warplanes continued pounding forces loyal to longtime leader Moammar Gaddafi. Explosions and plumes of smoke marked the scene of the strikes against [...]

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Gaddafi cannot hold out. But who will replace him?

by News Sources 03.21.2011

Patrick Cockburn writes: In the next few weeks Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is likely to lose power. The forces arrayed against him are too strong. His own political and military support is too weak. The US, Britain and France are scarcely going to permit a stalemate to develop whereby he clings on to Tripoli and parts [...]

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Yemen’s president close to being ousted

by News Sources 03.21.2011

Bloomberg reports: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh faced a growing internal revolt as some army leaders joined ministers and diplomats in abandoning his regime three days after it cracked down on protesters, killing dozens. Military officers including Mohammed Ali Muhssein, commander of the eastern region, and Hamid al-Qushaibi, head of an armored brigade, have “announced [...]

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Syria deploys troops after protests

by News Sources 03.21.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Syrian troops have been deployed in the southern city of Daraa a day after an anti-government protester was killed when forces reportedly fired on a demonstration. News agencies, citing residents, said that thousands of Syrians marched on Monday in the town following the funeral of Raed Akrad, the killed protester. A resident [...]

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US Army ‘kill team’ in Afghanistan posed for photos of murdered civilians

by News Sources 03.21.2011

The Guardian reports: Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of “trophy” photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed. Senior officials at Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news [...]

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War in Libya — mission under construction

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Associated Press reports: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that the U.S. expects to turn control of the Libya military mission over to a coalition — probably headed either by the French and British or by NATO — “in a matter of days.” In his first public remarks since the start of the bombings, [...]

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Leaving Gaddafi a way out

by Paul Woodward 03.20.2011

If Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama believe that Gaddafi’s demonization makes the war legitimate in the eyes of domestic audiences which might otherwise lack interest in the fate of Libya, the West will have needlessly restricted the range of acceptable outcomes to this war. Even at this point, there should be some effort to open up [...]

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Arabs say Gaddafi must go, wary of Western action

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Reuters reports: Muammar Gaddafi’s appeal for Arab solidarity in the face of foreign air strikes fell on deaf ears across the Middle East on Sunday, but support for his opponents was mixed with deep suspicion of Western motives. Western forces have unleashed their biggest military attack in the Arab world since the 2003 U.S. invasion [...]

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Military assets in battle for Libya

by News Sources 03.20.2011

After numerous statements from officials and military experts on how difficult and time consuming it would be to put a no-fly zone in state, the Pentagon now says that it’s already effectively been put in place. Share

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Egyptians approve constitutional amendments

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Egyptians have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a package of constitutional amendments, according to official results released on Sunday evening. Slightly more than 77 per cent of voters endorsed the amendments, the country’s supreme judicial committee has announced. Roughly 18 million Egyptians went to the polls on Saturday, a 41 per cent [...]

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Inside Story – True democracy for Egypt?

by News Sources 03.20.2011

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The fabrication of Bahrain’s Shiite-Sunni divide

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Shirin Sadeghi writes: Bahrain, like so many other countries in the region and in the world, is just another victim of British mapmaking, American business interests and the seedy intersection of these forces. For centuries, the British have supported the Al Khalifa Sunni tribe — a family originating in the Saudi peninsula — as rulers [...]

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Bloody days in Sanaa

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Barak Barfi writes: For years, many Yemen observers argued that the dilemmas the country faced — a secession movement in the south, a sectarian rebellion in the north, and a flourishing al Qaeda affiliate — threatened to implode the country. But as I argued shortly after the 2009 Christmas Day bombing, these challenges were unlikely [...]

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The West’s fear of equality

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Haroon Siddiqui, at the Toronto Star, spoke to the long-exiled recently-returned Tunisian Islamist leader, Rashid Gannoushi, who said: “Islam is not a threat to the West. The popular revolutions sweeping the Middle East are not against the West but, in fact, influenced by the concept of freedom, egalitarianism, justice, rule of law. The West should [...]

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Rebecca Solnit: hope and turmoil in 2011

by TomDispatch 03.20.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com She entered my life at a grim moment — just after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 when a vast antiwar movement was largely packing its tents and preparing to head home in despair.  She embraced the darkness and in it saw hope, and her essay on the subject for [...]

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The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.19.2011

The Los Angeles Times reports: With his popularity at a record low and facing an election next year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in desperate need of a boost to his political stature. And on Saturday, he got it. The French leader, once dubbed Super Sarko by the local press for his eagerness to take [...]

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Operation Odyssey Dawn

by Paul Woodward 03.19.2011

A few hours ago I had it mind to note that one of the distinctions of the attack on Libya was that even after it had begun, it had yet to receive a name. The fact that French jets were screeching across the sky above Benghazi, yet TV commentators could not with gravitas preface the [...]

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