the Libyan Embassy in Cairo

A friend’s Facebook wall reported seeing footage of a protest after dark. It’s only 4 or 5 blocks from where I live, so I rushed over there, hoping I could add a few decibels to the shouts and convince the Libyan Ambassador to Egypt to switch sides as has already happened with their Ambassadors to India, the Arab League, Indonesia, and Bangladesh [and now their Deputy Ambassador to the UN: see below].

Unfortunately, no protest remained by the time I arrived. There were just a number of nervous-looking Egyptian soldiers there, all the more nervous at my rapid approach, so I had to slow down a little and pretend to be going to the bank next door. It was shadowy darkness, and I could have looked like just about anything to them. Armored personnel carriers surrounded the Libyan Embassy, which is an unusually large facility occupying a good part of the block. (Not surprisingly, since the two countries are neighbors, and have had severe tensions at various times in the past.)

The following is now reported:

*9 staff members in the Libyan Embassy in London came outside and joined the demonstrators

*regular army forces west of Tripoli have attacked the Colonel’s elite loyalist forces; it may sound like a mismatch on paper, but the regular army defeated the elite forces in Benghazi last night

*Venezuela has denied offering asylum, and let’s hope it stays that way; the Colonel deserves to face a reckoning on the home soil of the populace he is terrorizing

And now the following from the BBC, with even Libya’s Deputy UN Ambassador turning against his boss:

1839: This just in from BBC Monitoring, citing the online edition of opposition newspaper Libya al-Yawm: “Mercenaries were reportedly shooting at crowds in Tripoli during an intense air assault. Intense aerial bombing in Tripoli… Panic and fear are overcoming the situation.”

1841: Libya’s deputy ambassador at the UN, Ibrahim Omar Al Dabashi, tells BBC World the Libyan leader will not be able to hold onto power for much longer. “I think it is the end of Col Gaddafi, it is a matter of days, whether he steps down or the Libyan people will get rid of him anyway,” he says. He believes Col Gaddafi should be put on trial: “Certainly the best scenario is to have him before the court, to prosecute him and to know from him everything about the crimes he committed before, whether it is the genocide of the prison of Abu Saleem or the genocide he is committing now or the disappearance of certain important personalities… and all the other crimes he has committed during the 42 years in power.”

I heard a report that the mercenaries are mainly from the Congo, unfortunately.

Further news: two Libyan planes landed in Malta. Upon questioning, the pilots want to defect. They were ordered to drop bombs on civilians, and refused.