March 2011

How the West can tip the balance towards a free Libya

by News Sources 03.07.2011

Aziz Meshiea, a Libyan reader of War in Context writes on his blog: Qaddafi’s support inside the country is so wafer-thin and dependent on his ability to show continued strength in suppressing any resistance, is a pretty well understood fact inside the country. As a Libyan myself, I see anti-interventionist essays and it truly irritates [...]

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The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.07.2011

Reuters reports Gaddafi may be looking for a way out: Al Jazeera said Gaddafi had proposed to Libyan rebels to hold a meeting of parliament to pave the way for him to step down with certain guarantees. It said Gaddafi made the proposal to the interim council, which speaks for mostly eastern areas controlled by [...]

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Obama is the change Bush could believe in

by News Sources 03.07.2011

Thanks to Antony Loewenstein for the headline. Politico reports: The Obama administration, which famously pledged to be the most transparent in American history, is pursuing an unexpectedly aggressive legal offensive against federal workers who leak secret information to expose wrongdoing, highlight national security threats or pursue a personal agenda. In just over two years since [...]

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Tom Engelhardt: (N)ever again

by TomDispatch 03.07.2011

Old secretaries of defense never die, they just write bestselling memoirs By Tom Engelhardt Talking about secretaries of defense… Oh, we weren’t? Well, let’s.  After all, they’re in the news.  Take former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who, on leaving government service — and I hope you don’t mind if I mangle a quote from General Douglas MacArthur here [...]

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Intifada update

by News Sources 03.07.2011

Storming Egypt State Security The video speaks for itself. We stormed into the notorious political police main HQ in Cairo after the authorities didn’t dismantle the apparatus. We did it ourselves. The end of the video shows an former Islamist detainee who discovered an electric torture tool explaining how he was tortured on it. Glory [...]

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Is a no-fly zone what Libyans want?

by Paul Woodward 03.07.2011

Jerry Haber observes: [L]iberal interventionists are highly selective in their moral outrage, and … suffer from a “Saving-Private-Ryan” complex – they will intervene to save people with whom they identify, people on their side. But if the civilians happen to be on other the side of their tribal divide, they become silent. Indeed. None of [...]

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The fight for Libya

by Paul Woodward 03.06.2011

As a debate continues in Washington and other Western capitals on the necessity, advisability or feasibility of some kind of foreign intervention in Libya, Britain has demonstrated why Libyans of any persuasion have good reason to question the intentions of outsiders. After a British “diplomatic team” made up of six SAS special forces soldiers and [...]

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Libya: a state of terror

by News Sources 03.06.2011

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Palestine and the Arab democratic revolution

by News Sources 03.06.2011

Mustafa Barghouthi writes: The rush and tumult of events makes it hard, sometimes, to draw the most important general conclusions from their significance. This said, the revolutionary tidal wave, which began in Tunisia and Algeria, reached its crest in Egypt and is currently sweeping other countries such as Libya and Bahrain, offers a unique opportunity [...]

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Values added: religion and the uprisings in Egypt and Libya

by News Sources 03.06.2011

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Power of global protest — Jonathan Schell on the decentralized superpower of the people

by News Sources 03.06.2011

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America is NOT broke

by News Sources 03.06.2011

Michael Moore, speaking yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin: Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just [...]

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Why China won’t revolt

by News Sources 03.06.2011

GlobalPost reports: With single young men at the heart of Arab world revolt, China might seem a country ripe for uprising. But while it’s got millions of single young men, they don’t appear interested in amassing a movement for change. China now has at least 20 million young men with no chance of ever finding [...]

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Intifada update

by News Sources 03.06.2011

Egypt and Tunisia’s unfinished revolutions It’s been just seven weeks since President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia, and just over three weeks since Hosni Mubarak was unceremoniously dumped from the presidency by the Egyptian military — but both countries have already unseated their interim prime ministers. Egypt’s Ahmed Shafiq on Wednesday followed last [...]

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Obama conspires with Mideast despots to slow the advance of democracy

by Paul Woodward 03.05.2011

“Everybody realized that Bahrain was just too important to fail,” said an Obama administration official. And what would cause failure? For the monarchy to be overthrown and replaced with a democracy. From Washington’s perspective, the people in Bahrain, the other Gulf states and especially in Saudi Arabia cannot be trusted with the power to determine [...]

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Listening Post – The shootout, the US agent and the media

by News Sources 03.05.2011

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Bradley Manning’s forced nudity to occur daily

by News Sources 03.05.2011

Glenn Greenwald writes: To follow-up on yesterday’s observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days: brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future — not only when he [...]

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US anti-Muslim rally raises fears

by News Sources 03.05.2011

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This is war, not revolution

by News Sources 03.04.2011

The #Libyan people are no longer protesting, we’re simply trying to survive. This is war, not revolution. #Gaddafi changed the game. @Libyan4life CNN reports: At least 15 people have been killed and 200 more wounded in the Libyan city of Zawiya, an eyewitness told CNN. Wounded people started arriving at the hospital Friday morning. Most [...]

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The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.04.2011

The Guardian reports: Security forces have used teargas and live ammunition to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters who marched in Tripoli after prayers. Several hundred demonstrators gathered in Tajura, an area east of the capital, chanting: “Gaddafi is the enemy of God.” Protesters tore down posters of the Libyan leader and spraypainted walls with graffiti [...]

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‘Neither with the West, nor against it’

by News Sources 03.04.2011

Alain Gresh writes: The fantasy that the Arabs are passive and unsuited to democracy has evaporated in weeks. Arabs have overthrown hated authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In Libya, they have fought a sclerotic regime in power for 42 years that has refused to listen to their demands, facing extraordinary violence, hundreds of deaths, [...]

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Wadah Khanfar: A historic moment in the Arab world

by News Sources 03.04.2011

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Oman’s Sultan Qaboos: a classy despot

by News Sources 03.04.2011

“Sultan Qaboos, Oman’s absolute ruler, is a man of culture,” writes Brian Whitaker. “I have never encountered a place in the Arab world so well-governed as Oman, and in such a quiet and understated way,” Robert Kaplan wrote the other day in an article for Foreign Policy headed “Oman’s renaissance man”. Last weekend, though, overshadowed [...]

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The Muslim Brothers in Egypt’s ‘orderly transition’

by News Sources 03.04.2011

Gilbert Achcar writes: Egypt’s uprising, contrary to most predictions, was initiated and driven by coalitions – including political parties, associations and internet networks – which were dominated by secular and democratic forces. Islamic organisations or their individual members took part on an equal footing with groups of marginal importance before the uprising, and with groups [...]

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