time running out on the Colonel?

We’ve been saying this almost daily for the past week, but now it sounds like Qaddafi really, really might be close to the end:

“Defection within the Libyan army against Colonel Gaddafi, who assumed power in 1969 after toppling the Libyan monarchy, is on the rise, according to the assessment of Western and Arab diplomats. “The countdown is on and I think that by the end of this week we will be living in a(n) [Arab] world [free of] Gaddafi, Mubarak and Ben Ali,” commented an Arab diplomat who asked for his name to be withheld.”

comparing two failed heirs apparent

During my time in Egypt, I’ve seen public lectures by both Gamal Mubarak and Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi. And although Gamal did attend our university (way before my time; he’s older than I am) I’d have to say I was more impressed intellectually by the Qaddafi boy.

But how many people have suicided their international reputations as badly as Saif managed to do in the past few weeks? Even if he survives this mess (and I’m not so sure), he’s facing the likelihood of trial and the certainty of social outlaw status and possibly a major financial debacle of frozen assets. Assuming he survives the fighting and also avoids a Dutch prison, what will he spend the rest of his life doing? The LSE is unlikely to invite him back to do anything, I’d say.

By contrast, Gamal will probably settle down and live the good life in London, a place where he feels very comfortable and owns some expensive property that he’ll probably find some way to shield from seizure. Just guessing.

The difference between those two fates (likely death for Saif, probably a decent standard of living for Gamal) emanates directly from the difference in characters between the two fathers. Saif’s dad is the very epitome of crazy, and is dragging his son down with him in his hallucinogenic latter days. Gamal’s dad was a bit out of touch with reality near the end, but he was a fundamentally sane and grounded character before the revolution, despite his glaring faults, and didn’t wish to (or wasn’t allowed to?) pull a Götterdämmrung on Egypt the way Qaddafi is doing on Libya.

two interesting notes

The case for no Western intervention:

1655: Dima Khatib, an Arab journalist tweets: “I hear a few intellectuals speaking from liberated areas of Libya, concerned, saying they don’t want foreign hands to intervene.”

This seemed to be the case in Egypt as well. People wanted moral support and respect for what they were doing. They maybe hoped for some more encouraging Obama speeches. But nobody wanted anything more than that. (Then again, that was never remotely an option for Egypt, whereas for Libya it’s at least conceivable.) The Arab people want to own their own revolutions, and they should be allowed to do so. (Though don’t forget, the USA needed significant French Imperialist help to defeat Britain in its own revolution.)

In other news, another pilot deliberately ejects and lets his plane crash rather than follow a dire order from the Colonel:

1700: The Guardian’s Martin Chulov in Libya tweets: “Went to site of crashed Libyan air force jet today. Pilot refused to bomb oil depots&ejected. One bomb wedged in sand.”

Qaddafi deserted by his famous “voluptuous blonde Ukrainian nurse”

HERE.

Badiou weighs in

On the people’s uprisings. HERE.

the frustration of Libya

I agree with a friend who just wrote: it’s very frustrating to sit here watching Libya, knowing that Qaddafi just needs one more push.

And not only aren’t our Western governments doing anything, it might not even be a good idea for them to do so. It’s a question I’m still wrestling with, and currently I’m leaning towards “do nothing substantial.” These Arab people’s revolutions need to be free of even the hint of neo-colonial support; they need to be completely homegrown, in order to be what they are.

Besides which, as I also agree with my friend who wrote, Iraq effectively undermined the US/UK ability to do anything militarily in these sorts of cases.

But logistical and intelligence support can both be very useful, and maybe we can give them plenty of both. I don’t know.

blogger defeats President

Below is a nice cartoon of the deceased blogger holding the ex-President.

You can get the details about the disgraceful June 6, 2010 incident on many websites, of which the most accessible is Wikipedia’s “Death of Khaled Mohamed Saeed” article.

Below the cartoon is a photo of the two accused police officers, Awad Sulaiman and Mahmoud Salah, two of the most hated men in Egypt right now.

police trial postponed in beating death of blogger Khaled Said

Khaled Said’s brutal death in Alexandria in 2010 can be viewed as the spark that led to this year’s revolution.

The trial of the police officers in that case (there wasn’t going to be one at all, until protestors last year showed unprecedented rage) has been postponed from February 25 to March 26.

HERE.

For those who missed my earlier background posts on the unfortunate Mr. Said, here are two.

1. At the CHRONIKLER BLOG, you can see the grisly before/after photos of the young man, which expose as an utter lie the initial claim that he choked to death after swallowing marijuana to hide the evidence of drug use. This was preposterously claimed by two consecutive forensic reports, which insultingly added that Mr. Said did hit a blunt object, but that this was not the cause of death.

Also on that page you can find a link to the video that got him killed after he posted it on the web. It appears to show corrupt Alexandria police officers divvying up drugs seized in a bust. Reportedly he was dragged from an Alexandria cybercafe and beaten to death in front of eyewitnesses. The resulting protest was a new level of ferocious by the Egyptian populace. It did give me (and many others) the sense that something had snapped and the public would be taking less crap from the government in the future. The government also seemed mildly alarmed at the time by the severity of the reaction, and they did decide to throw the police officers to the hounds and let them be tried, whereas the first reaction was to claim they’d done nothing wrong.

2. The second post I want to link to again here is the MOVING FOOTAGE of a crowd celebrating outside Said’s apartment in Alexandria following Mubarak’s resignation. The now famous Wael Ghonim of Google acquired his moral stature by serving as the secret administrator of a Facebook group in honor of Said.

If you want to see the Facebook group, search for “We Are All Khaled Said,” which has 96,000 “likes.” Please click “like” yourself, as I just did. It’s a Facebook page that sparked a revolution.

Qaddafi’s weird folk etymologies

1156: Did you know that Shakespeare was an Arab by origin, descended from a Mr Sheikh Zubayr, and that America derived its name from an emir by the name of Ka? These are just some of the theories advanced by Col Gaddafi over the years, according to an AFP profile.

is firing from an ambulance a crime against humanity?

I suppose the term “war crimes” is probably applicable only to wars between states, and in that context I’ll bet firing from an ambulance counts as a war crime. In the present Libyan context does it count as a “crime against humanity”? I’m not well-versed in what does count, but the following sort of incident apparently happened many times in Tripoli yesterday, and it’s abominable:

1213: Naser, living in Tripoli, has told the BBC World Service that gunmen in an ambulance were among those who opened fire after Friday prayers. He broke into tears as he related the attack: “And then we saw [an] ambulance coming. We were so happy – at least they’d take these wounded people. When the ambulance stopped, the back door opened. Armed people came out of the ambulance and started shooting at the people. I can’t explain the feeling how it was. I was terrified. I mean, [an] ambulance.”

Here again, it’s something you’d expect only The Joker to come up with.