Thoughts on the Uprisings in North Africa and Middle East?

2-0-Sixx · Feb 11, 2011

so it was a weird last 24 hours. Mubarak made a big speech yesterday, with a million people on the streets and everyone was anticipating he would step down, but to everyones shock and disbelief he refused instead transfering power to the vice president but remaining in office until after the election. Dude is pretty detached from reality, saying he is in support of the people protesting (doesn't he realize they are protesting him!) talking about himself in the 3rd person and shit.

Then today, as the people were staging another huge protest, the vice president announced Mubarak stepped down for good.

Article today on Mubarak stepping down:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12433045

Article yesterday on Mubarak refusing to step down:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12424587

Full text of Mubarak's speech:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12427091

I don't think the Egyptians should be satisfied just yet. They should continue until they overthrow the regime completely.

Roz · Feb 11, 2011

2-0-Sixx said:

so it was a weird last 24 hours. Mubarak made a big speech yesterday, with a million people on the streets and everyone was anticipating he would step down, but to everyones shock and disbelief he refused instead transfering power to the vice president but remaining in office until after the election. Dude is pretty detached from reality, saying he is in support of the people protesting (doesn't he realize they are protesting him!) talking about himself in the 3rd person and shit.

Then today, as the people were staging another huge protest, the vice president announced Mubarak stepped down for good.

Article today on Mubarak stepping down:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12433045

Article yesterday on Mubarak refusing to step down:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12424587

Full text of Mubarak's speech:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12427091

I don't think the Egyptians should be satisfied just yet. They should continue until they overthrow the regime completely.

I agree.

SeriouslyThug · Feb 12, 2011

Algeria’s Internet, Facebook Shut Down As Unrest Intensifies

Protests in Algeria intensified today, and the Algerian government responded by deleting Facebook accounts and shutting down Internet service providers across the country, according to The Telegraph.

In a volatile situation similar to that which brought down former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Algerian government has dispatched 30,000 riot police in Algiers, and is resorting to tear gas and plastic bullets to try to discourage dissent, according to The Telegraph.

Algerians are calling this uprising the “February 12 Revolution,” as they protest government corruption, massive unemployment, housing problems and poverty. They would like to oust Algerian President Abdelaziz Boutifleka, whose police forces are also trying to silence journalists, according to The Telegraph.

From what we’ve seen so far, shutting down the Internet and deleting Facebook accounts is not going to work. We’re thinking this is just one of many revolutions that are about to sweep the Middle East.

Roz · Feb 13, 2011

Sit back and watch the domino's fall over.

SeriouslyThug · Feb 16, 2011

Libya: Protests 'rock city of Benghazi'

There are reports of protests by hundreds of people in the Libyan city of Benghazi.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that the unrest had been triggered by the arrest of a lawyer who is an outspoken critic of the government.

The lawyer was later said to have been released but the protests continued.

Pro-democracy protests have swept through several Arab countries in recent weeks, forcing the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt from power.

A call has been put out on the internet for protests across Libya on Thursday.

'Police injured'
There is no independent confirmation of the overnight protests in Benghazi, but eyewitnesses say that at one stage some 2,000 people were involved.

They say stones were thrown at police who are said to have responded with water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets.

Later, state television showed pictures of several hundred people in Benghazi voicing their support for the government. The government has so far not commented on events in the city.

Fourteen people were injured, including 10 police officers, Reuters quoted a report in the online edition of Libya's privately-owned Quryna as saying.

One witness, who did not want to be named, later told the BBC: "A couple of people in the crowd started chanting anti-government slogans and the crowd took that on.

"But then there were clashes with pro-government supporters and then after a bit the pro-government supporters were dispersed and then the security services arrived and they dispersed the crowds with hot-water cannons."

The protests began after the arrest of Fathi Terbil, who represents relatives of the alleged massacre of prisoners by security forces in Tripoli's Abu Slim jail in 1996, reports say.

Sources say he was held after telling relatives of current inmates that the prison was on fire and urging them to protest. Mr Terbil was later said to have been freed.

The Middle East has seen a wave of protests fuelled by discontent over unemployment, rising living costs, corruption and autocratic leaderships.

They began with the overthrow of Tunisia's leader, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in January.

Last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt resigned.

In recent days there have also been anti-government demonstrations in Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12477275

MaKaVeLi_420 · Feb 20, 2011

Feb 19 - Unbelievable Video: Bahrain Army Opens Fire On Peaceful Protesters

this video kinda left me speechless because I don't like to view peoples live's being taken. It's not overly graphic, but i think it's pretty clear that at least 1 person here was murdered. It's also important to note the situation happening all over the middle east/north africa right now, which is why I'm posting this video. I will try to find an article sourcing the vid...will edit when I find one. Thoughts from the sicc's elite?

Vamps · Feb 20, 2011

Syria 'a kingdom of silence'

Despite a wave of protests spreading across the Middle East, so far the revolutionary spirit has failed to reach Syria.

Authoritarian rule, corruption and economic hardship are characteristics Syria share with both Egypt and Tunisia. However, analysts say that in addition to the repressive state apparatus, factors such as a relatively popular president and religious diversity make an uprising in the country unlikely.

Online activists have been urging Syrians to take to the streets but the calls for a "Syrian revolution" last weekend only resulted in some unconfirmed reports of small demonstrations in the mainly Kurdish northeast.

"First of all, I'd argue that people in Syria are a lot more afraid of the government and the security forces than they were in Egypt," Nadim Houry, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Lebanon, says.

"The groups who have mobilised in the past in Syria for any kind of popular protest have paid a very heavy price - Kurds back in 2004 when they had their uprising in Qamishli and Islamists in the early 1980s, notably in Hama."

The so-called Hama massacre, in which the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in 1982 in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, is believed to have killed about 20,000 people.

"I think that in the Syrian psyche, the repression of the regime is taken as a given, that if something [protests] would happen the military and the security forces would both line up together. I think that creates a higher threshold of fear."

Demonstrations are unlawful under the country's emergency law, and political activists are regularly detained. There are an estimated 4,500 "prisoners of opinion" in Syrian jails, according to the Haitham Maleh Foundation, a Brussels-based Syrian rights organisation.

'Kingdom of silence'

As pages on Facebook called for demonstrations to be held in cities across Syria in early February, more than 10 activists told Human Rights Watch they were contacted by security services who warned them not to try and mobilise.

"Syria has for many years been a 'kingdom of silence'," Suhair Atassi, an activist in Damascus, says, when asked why no anti-government protests were held.

"Fear is dominating peoples' lives, despite poverty, starvation and humiliation ... When I was on my way to attend a sit-in against [the monopoly of] Syria's only mobile phone operators, I explained to the taxi driver where I was going and why.

"He told me: 'Please organise a demonstration against the high cost of diesel prices. The cold is killing us'. I asked him: 'Are you ready to demonstrate with us against the high diesel price?" He replied 'I'm afraid of being arrested because I’m the only breadwinner for my family!"

Fawas Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics, says Syria is one of the Middle Eastern countries least likely to be hit by popular protests, because of its power structure.

He says the allegiance of the army in Syria is different than in both Tunisia, where the military quickly became one of the main backers of the president's ouster, and in Egypt, where the army still has not taken sides.

"The army in Syria is the power structure," he says. "The armed forces would fight to an end. It would be a bloodbath, literally, because the army would fight to protect not only the institution of the army but the regime itself, because the army and the regime is one and the same."

The rest of the article here

ThaG · Feb 20, 2011

I follow the events and read people's reactions and I am simply amazed by how pretty much nobody gets it that by cheering for those regimes to fail they are cheering for their own imminent very serious suffering. It is the height of delusion to think that any of these revolutions can result in anything else other than, in the best case scenario, another dictator taking over. Functioning democracy does not materialize out of thin air simply on good will, a very high level of human development almost always precedes the establishment of functioning democracy, doing it the other way round very rarely works, and usually brings complete chaos. Has anyone asked themselves why is it that all those countries have dictators and all of them are so corrupt? The answer is that there would be no countries if there weren't those dictators as a lot of them are completely artificial remnants of the colonial system full of centuries-old tribal conflicts, so the only thing keeping them together is the dictatorship. And they are so corrupt because corruption, contrary to what most people think is a bottom-up phenomenon, not a top-down one. If the regime is corrupt, that almost invariably means that corruption permeates society on all levels, and that it long predates the establishment of the regime in question. It's the norm. That's not going to change by changing the regime, it is just going to be someone else who will do the oppression. In fact, as ironic as it is, dictatorships that see themselves as stable tend to be less corrupt and have the welfare of their citizens more in mind than dictatorships that fear they will be toppled soon, because if you think that you will rule until your death, you steal less than you do if you know that you only have a limited and likely short time to do that and then you will have to flee somewhere.

So as I said, best case scenario, it's another dictator. Worst case scenario is a civil war and complete chaos. Now if that's a former soviet republic like Moldova, Georgia or Tajikistan that doesn't have much resources, that's not much of a problem for the rest of the world, but this is the Middle East. A civil war in Libya means 2 million barrels of oil a day taken out of the market. Right now the world can not afford 2 million barrels of oil a day to be taken out of the market because the price is already $100 and if that was to happen, it would mean 1973-like situation.

That's Libya alone. Imagine what happens if the Shia in Dammam decide that they are sick of Sunni Saudi rule too, as those in Bahrain did...

Meanwhile none of those protesting would ever want to hear about the real causes of their problems, which involve things like the fact that populations in those countries have, depending on the place, tripled to quintupled in the last 100 years, that they are living completely unsustainable lifestyles based on fossil water, oil exports and food imports, which will all run out in the not so distant future (in fact they already ran out in Egypt) and that they have to pretty much completely abandon their religion if they are to deal with those problems before the problems deal with them. Not a word about that from the protesters, not a word about it from the fans watching from the stands in the West either....

A mass exercise in collective delusion...

2-0-Sixx · Feb 21, 2011

damn, Gaddafi may be gone

Libya protests: Gaddafi regime shaken by unrest

The 40-year rule of Col Muammar Gaddafi is under threat amid spiralling unrest throughout Libya.

Several senior officials - including the justice minister - have reportedly resigned after security forces fired on protesters in Tripoli overnight.

Witnesses say renewed protests have hit two suburbs of the capital.

In an earlier TV address, Col Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam conceded that the eastern cities of al-Bayda and Benghazi were under opposition control.

But he warned of civil war and vowed that the regime would "fight to the last bullet".

The BBC's Jon Leyne, in neighbouring Egypt, says Col Gaddafi has now lost the support of almost every section of society.

Reliable sources say Col Gaddafi has now left the capital, our correspondent adds.

'Hatred of Libya'

After clashes in the capital overnight were suppressed by security forces, state TV reported a renewed operation had begun against opposition elements there.

Security forces have started to storm into the dens of terror and sabotage, spurred by the hatred of Libya," the Libyan TV channel reported.

An eyewitness in Tripoli told the BBC that the suburbs of Fashloom and Zawiyat al-Dahmani had been cordoned off by security forces.

Protesters were out on the streets and flames and smoke could be seen rising from the area, the witness said.

Amid the turmoil on the streets, senior officials have also begun to desert the regime.

Justice Minister Mustapha Abdul Jalil quit the government because of the "excessive use of violence", the privately owned Quryna newspaper reported.

In New York, Libya's deputy ambassador to the UN denounced the Gaddafi government, accusing it of carrying out genocide against the people.

Libya's envoy to the Arab League, Abdel Moneim al-Honi, announced he was "joining the revolution", and its ambassador to India, Ali al-Essawi, told the BBC he was also resigning.

In another blow to Col Gaddafi's rule, two tribes - including Libya's largest tribe, the Warfla - have backed the protesters.

Meanwhile, two helicopters and two fighter jets from Libya landed in Malta.

The helicopter was said to be carrying French oil workers.

The fighter pilots, both colonels, took off from a base near Tripoli after they had been ordered to bomb protesters, Maltese officials quoted by Reuters news agency said.

The agency said one of them had asked for asylum.
'Decisive moment'

Human Rights Watch says at least 233 people have died since last Thursday, though in his speech, Saif al-Islam insisted reports of the death toll had been exaggerated.

The US, UK and French governments are among those condemning the harsh treatment of protesters.

The US has ordered all families of embassy staff and all non-essential diplomats to leave the country.

Italy, the former colonial power in Libya, has close business links to Tripoli and voiced alarm at the prospect of the Gaddafi government collapsing.

"Would you imagine to have an Islamic Arab Emirate at the borders of Europe? This would be a very serious threat," said Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

The head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, described the protesters' demands as legitimate, calling it a "decisive moment in history" for Arab nations.
Oil price jumps

Reports from several cities suggest the country is sliding out of the government's control:

* In Az-Zawiya, 40km (25 miles) west of Tripoli, witnesses say the police have fled, government buildings have been burnt down and the city is in chaos.
* Unconfirmed reports from the port city of Darnah say protesters are holding more than 300 workers hostage - many of them Bangladeshis.
* Several hundred Libyans stormed a South Korean-run construction site west of Tripoli, injuring at least four workers.
* In Benghazi, reports say 11 solders were killed by their commanding officers for refusing to fire on protesters.

The violence has helped to push up oil prices to their highest levels since the global financial crisis of 2008.

At one point, Brent crude - one of the main benchmarks on world oil markets - reached $105 (£65) a barrel.

International firms including BP, one of the world's biggest oil companies, are preparing to pull their staff out of Libya.

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The telegraph is reporting Gaddafi has fled to Venezuela, but as far as I can tell this is unconfirmed...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-Venezuela-as-cities-fall-to-protesters.html#

2-0-Sixx · Feb 21, 2011

ThaG said:

I follow the events and read people's reactions and I am simply amazed by how pretty much nobody gets it that by cheering for those regimes to fail they are cheering for their own imminent very serious suffering. It is the height of delusion to think that any of these revolutions can result in anything else other than, in the best case scenario, another dictator taking over. Functioning democracy does not materialize out of thin air simply on good will, a very high level of human development almost always precedes the establishment of functioning democracy, doing it the other way round very rarely works, and usually brings complete chaos. Has anyone asked themselves why is it that all those countries have dictators and all of them are so corrupt? The answer is that there would be no countries if there weren't those dictators as a lot of them are completely artificial remnants of the colonial system full of centuries-old tribal conflicts, so the only thing keeping them together is the dictatorship. And they are so corrupt because corruption, contrary to what most people think is a bottom-up phenomenon, not a top-down one. If the regime is corrupt, that almost invariably means that corruption permeates society on all levels, and that it long predates the establishment of the regime in question. It's the norm. That's not going to change by changing the regime, it is just going to be someone else who will do the oppression. In fact, as ironic as it is, dictatorships that see themselves as stable tend to be less corrupt and have the welfare of their citizens more in mind than dictatorships that fear they will be toppled soon, because if you think that you will rule until your death, you steal less than you do if you know that you only have a limited and likely short time to do that and then you will have to flee somewhere.

So as I said, best case scenario, it's another dictator. Worst case scenario is a civil war and complete chaos. Now if that's a former soviet republic like Moldova, Georgia or Tajikistan that doesn't have much resources, that's not much of a problem for the rest of the world, but this is the Middle East. A civil war in Libya means 2 million barrels of oil a day taken out of the market. Right now the world can not afford 2 million barrels of oil a day to be taken out of the market because the price is already $100 and if that was to happen, it would mean 1973-like situation.

That's Libya alone. Imagine what happens if the Shia in Dammam decide that they are sick of Sunni Saudi rule too, as those in Bahrain did...

Meanwhile none of those protesting would ever want to hear about the real causes of their problems, which involve things like the fact that populations in those countries have, depending on the place, tripled to quintupled in the last 100 years, that they are living completely unsustainable lifestyles based on fossil water, oil exports and food imports, which will all run out in the not so distant future (in fact they already ran out in Egypt) and that they have to pretty much completely abandon their religion if they are to deal with those problems before the problems deal with them. Not a word about that from the protesters, not a word about it from the fans watching from the stands in the West either....

A mass exercise in collective delusion...

with all due respect comrade I think it is you that is delusional.

Mac Jesus · Feb 21, 2011

What the fuck? I thought ThaG died in that whole discovery channel thing.

2-0-Sixx · Feb 21, 2011

this is an article from yesterday this is a great read into what's going on in Libya, this isn't some peaceful protests like in Egypt this is people taking up arms and fighting in the streets:

Libyan government massacres demonstrators as uprising spreads

21 February 2011

The Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi is attempting to violently suppress an uprising centred in the country’s eastern cities and towns. US-based organisation Human Rights Watch has said it has confirmed 173 deaths in the protests, which began last Thursday, but according to some reports more than 500 may have been killed by regime forces.

One of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif El Islam Gaddafi, spoke live on state television at around 1 a.m. this morning—he declared “we are not Tunisia and Egypt”, warned of civil war, and menacingly threatened to “fight to the last minute, until the last bullet”.

Most of the killings have been in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, on the north-east coast. Reports are limited due to government censorship and strict restrictions on foreign journalists. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts have been jammed, and the internet has been almost entirely shut down.

The demonstrations in Benghazi against the Gaddafi government appear to have developed into an open insurrection. Many people in the city who have been able to speak with the media have described the situation as resembling a war zone, with guerrilla fighting between government and anti-government forces.

Residents told Al Jazeera that they had constructed barricades from rubbish and debris. One military unit reportedly joined the uprising.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “There were numerous reports that protesters had seized weapons caches from abandoned government bases and had gone on the offensive against government barracks. ‘The soldiers have fled and the citizens have taken their weapons,’ one resident of Benghazi said in a telephone interview. ‘Citizens now have rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikovs and hand grenades. I can hear the bullets now and RPGs and people beeping their car horn in celebrations’.”

Libya is bordered to its west by Tunisia, and to its east by Egypt. Muammar Gaddafi—who in recent years has assiduously courted the approval of Washington and the European powers, also working closely with major oil corporations—is now clearly determined to avoid the same fate as former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, using violence and state provocations to maintain his tenuous grip on power.

Many of those killed in Benghazi and elsewhere were unarmed, and reportedly included women and children. Government snipers fired on people from rooftops. Tanks and helicopter gunships were also used against demonstrators. A regional medical coordinator in Benghazi told Al Jazeera: “At least one dead man had been hit by an anti-aircraft missile, while other bodies are riddled with heavy machine gun fire.”

A doctor in a Benghazi hospital also told the television news network: “It’s a massacre here. The military is shooting at all the protesters with live bullets, I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. The military forces are everywhere, even from the hospital I work, we are not safe. There was an 8-year-old boy who died the other day from a gunshot to the head—what did he do to deserve this?”

The Wall Street Journal reported: “Residents said pro-Gadhafi loyalists driving around in cars fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at anyone in the streets.”

Many of these weapons have been exported by Britain and France. On Saturday, the British government of Prime Minister David Cameron suspended eight licences for further arms exports to Libya, along with 24 licences for contracts with the Bahraini government. The Independent reported that since coming to office last May, the Cameron government has issued licences for British companies to provide the Gaddafi regime with “tear gas, small-arms ammunition, military vehicles and thermal-imaging equipment”.

Several sources claimed that the military shot into crowds of mourners attending funerals of those earlier killed by government forces.

Demonstrators have also alleged that many of these forces are foreign mercenaries, from Chad, Tunisia, and other African countries. Fatih, a 26-year-old unemployed Benghazi resident, told Al Jazeera that many of the foreign security forces spoke only French, not Arabic, “making them impossible to reason with”. She added: “They don’t ask questions—they just shoot live ammunition. Innocent people are getting caught up in all this. They are being killed for simply staying at home. House-to-house searches are taking place as the security forces look for weapons.”

Fighting has been reported in the other cities and towns in the east. In Bayda, a city of around 200,000 people near the Egyptian border, residents said that local police joined anti-government forces and attacked the army’s second brigade, forcing soldiers to retreat to the city’s outskirts. In Ajdabiya, a town 160 kilometres south of Benghazi, Al Jazeera reported that protestors have declared a “Free City” after razing the headquarters of Gaddafi’s Revolutionary Committee and fourteen other government buildings.

Unrest has spread from the east to the capital, Tripoli, and other urban centres in the west. Late last night, up to 2,000 protestors defied the government clampdown and gathered in Tripoli, reportedly burning a portrait of Gaddafi and chanting anti-government slogans.

The New York Times reported: “Young men armed themselves with chains around their knuckles, steel pipes and machetes. The police had retreated from some neighborhoods, and protesters were seen armed with police batons, helmets and rifles commandeered from riot squads. The protesters set Dumpsters on fire, blocking roads in some neighborhoods. In the early evening the sound and smells of gunfire hung over the central city, and by midnight looting had begun.”

In the city of Zentan, southwest of Tripoli, AFP reported that several government buildings were burned down amid clashes.

Late Sunday, the leadership of the Warfala tribe, one of the largest among Libya’s population of 6.4 million, declared it was joining the movement against Gaddafi. The 500,000-strong Tuareg tribe has similarly moved against the government. According to Al Jazeera: “Protesters in Ghat and Ubary, home to Libyan Tuareg clans are reportedly attacking government buildings and police stations.”

The government’s crisis is triggering the emergence of divisions within the ruling elite. Yesterday two of Gaddafi’s diplomats declared their opposition to the regime. Libya’s ambassador to China, Hussein Sadiq al Musrati, announced his resignation while appearing on Al Jazeera’s Arabic network. He appealed for the army to intervene. Libya’s Arab League representative in Cairo, Abdel-Monem al-Houni, said he had “resigned from all his duties and joined the popular revolution”.

Inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, working people and students in Libya are driven by the same social and economic problems wracking North Africa and the Middle East. Unemployment in Libya is believed to be as high as 30 percent, and poverty is deep and widespread, despite the country’s enormous oil wealth. The precise role played by the social grievances of the working class and urban poor in these protests is difficult to determine, however.

Within the movement, especially in the east, various tribal leaderships are most concerned with securing a greater cut of the oil royalties for themselves. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday: “The country’s eastern half, of which Benghazi is the hub, has a long history of resistance to outsiders and of friction with Mr. Gadhafi’s government in Tripoli. Since taking power in a coup in 1969, Mr. Gadhafi has sidelined the region’s tribes in favor of his own Qatatfa tribe in the competition for key government posts. Though much of the country’s oil wealth is in the east, the territory sees a disproportionately low share of state investment and resources.”

Shaikh Faraj al Zuway, head of the Al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya, told Al Jazeera that unless the government’s violence stopped, “We will stop oil exports to Western countries within 24 hours.”

In his televised address this morning, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi attempted to bolster the government’s position by stoking fears of civil war and separatist splits. “There is a plot against Libya,” he declared. “People want to create a government in Benghazi and others want to have an Islamic emirate in Bayda. All these [people] have their own plots... The country will be divided like North and South Korea, we will see each other through a fence. You will wait in line for months for a visa.”

Gaddafi’s remarks underscored the regime’s increasingly tenuous grip on power. The dictator’s son admitted that the army had killed citizens—he blamed soldiers for not being used to dealing with “riots”—and acknowledged that demonstrators had armed themselves. He attempted to attribute the unrest to Libyan exiles in Europe and America, who “want us to kill each other then come and rule us, like in Iraq”. However, he also offered concessions including new media laws, a revised constitution, and even a “new national anthem and new flag”. In an attempt to defuse opposition in the working class, Gaddafi pledged to raise wages.

Mr. Nice Guy · Feb 21, 2011

ThaG said:

I find it simply selfish that people support things based solely upon what they anticipate the outcome will yield for them personally.

I don't know about you, but I tend to support things based on what I personally consider to be intrinsically right and wrong, not what I expect the impact to be on myself.

I do agree that we are on a path of infinite growth in a world of finite resources, with no signs of wavering - which is a recipe for inevitable disaster.

2-0-Sixx · Feb 21, 2011

(Reuters) - Two Libyan Air Force fighter pilots defected on Monday and flew their jets to Malta where they told authorities they had been ordered to bomb protesters, Maltese government officials said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/21/us-libya-protests-malta-idUSTRE71K52R20110221

Also,

LIBYA, 1:19 p.m. ET: Libyan helicopter gunships are firing into crowds of protesters, according to the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, an opposition group. CNN was unable to confirm the report independently.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/21/live-blogging-north-africa-middle-east-protests/?hpt=T1

WARNING: Graphic pictures of massacre:
http://www.liveleak.com/item?a=view&token=e85_1298319240

All times are Tripoli local time.

21:47 Al Arabiya: Libyan Military Source confirms orders were given to bombard Benghazi from the air within two hours. (via @SultanAlQassemi)

21:40: Eyewitnesseses are reporting what they call a “massacre” in the Fashloum and Tajoura districts of the Libyan capital Tripoli, AFP reports. (via BBC)

MaKaVeLi_420 · Feb 21, 2011

jesus christ

2-0-Sixx · Feb 21, 2011

10:59pm: Libyan city of Misratah, east of Tripoli, is latest to be attacked by airstrikes. Heavy artillery fire devastates buildings as tanks roll into the city, witnesses tell Al Jazeera.

10:57pm: Antonio Patriota, Brazilian foreign minister, denies Gaddafi has requested asylum in Brazil

HERESY · Feb 21, 2011

Mac Jesus said:

Huh? What are you talking about?

MaKaVeLi_420 · Feb 21, 2011

ThaG said:

I don't think I've seen you post in like 2 years....welcome back. I am wonderinf if you can elaborate on that a little....not sure what you mean by they would have to abandon their religion; which is something that will never happen..

and yea, everyone is living unsustainable. It's getting worse in developing countries and the poorest nations. Here is a short article (even though its off-topic and doesn't really say anything that we don't know already):

Mr. Nice Guy · Feb 21, 2011

^^^ yeah I read that article courtesy of yahoo frontpage as well lol. I am glad they are writing about the problem.

The recent issue of National Geographic has a pretty cool map of the world showing income rates by location and an article about the "typical" human.

This is pretty cool too;

http://earthpulse.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse/earthpulse-map

2-0-Sixx · Feb 21, 2011

some notes from aljazeera blog

Libyan leader Gaddafi appears briefly on state tv, says he is in capital Tripoli. More soon...

1:20am: Al Jazeera Arabic reports that adverts appear in Guinea and Nigeria offering would-be mercenaries up to US $2000 dollars per day

12:59am: Financial Times reports oil groups are preparing to shut down operations in Libya

12:34am: Images of bodies gutted in the attacks are too harrowing to be shown. Our colleagues on the TV side of the newsroom have had to pixellate the bloodied bodies, where limbs have been hacked off and torsos maimed.

12:32am: Saif Gaddafi denies any airstrikes on Libyan cities

12:30am: Further reports that Libyan border guards have abandoned the eastern border with Egypt

12:22am: Deputy FM denies use of mercenaries against Libyan citizens

12:20am: Still waiting for that speech from Gaddafi.

10:40pm: Yusuf Al Qardawi, a leading Sunni cleric, has just issued a fatwa on Al Jazeera Arabic, encouraging the assassination of Gaddafi.

Thoughts on the Uprisings in North Africa and Middle East?

Sicc OG

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Sicc OG

Sicc OG

IX.

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Girls send me your nudes

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THE HIDDEN HAND...

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