Dutch ISP provider XS4ALL has set up an internet dial-up service for Libya. Use your modem to dial +31205350535 username: xs4all password: xs4all
Articles with the Tag Jan25
Revolution is global
Libya in full revolt
Lenny thinks Libya is the next Middle East domino to fall:
But it seems that Libya is the surer bet for an overthrow in very near future. All of the ingredients are there. The state is cracking down with extreme brutality. In Benghazi, mercenaries shipped in by Gaddafi are carrying out random killings, with dozens reportedly dead so far. The regime is intent on terrorising the population into submission and has even, predictably, shut down the internet. The electricity has been shut off in insurgent areas. Yet it says a lot that Gaddafi is so lacking in authority over his own state structure that he’s having to hire mercenaries to come in and put down the revolt.
AlJazeera reports that the security forces are cracking down and have fired on funerals of demonstrators killed earlier in Benghazi, murdering at least nineteen more people. But they also report that in turn, the protestors have managed to take over the military security headquarters in that city, finding “African mercenaries” within. If Khadaffi has had to bring in foreign mercenaries, the end might be near for him…
Won’t somebody please think about the Egyptian cats?
What The Times thinks is important about the Egyptian revolution:
While the world has focused on the many troubles faced by humans during the 18-day uprising, the four-legged residents of Cairo have been left to fend for themselves. Many Egyptians, expats, and tourists have been forced by authorities to flee the country without their pets; zoos and pet shops were also abandoned. The chaos of the uprising put a tremendous strain on the nation’s largest animal rights organization, the Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals (ESMA), of which Khalil serves as treasurer. “It’s very common to see stray cats and dogs on the street, but not for us to see [abandoned] Persians and Siamese,” she says.
Reminds me of that (apocryptic?) prewar newspaper headling: “Earthquake hits Japan: two Americans feared lost”. Taking care of stray cats and other animals is a noble cause, sure, but somewhat less important than what’s also been happening in Egypt this past month, no?
Obama — Egypt’s secret saviour
Now to anyone paying the slightest attention, “Our President” notably and loudly vacillated and hedged through the first two weeks of Egyptian protests, for which he was routinely criticized by everyone from the softy liberals with the first hint of a hard-on in years at the Egyptians’ spirit of 68 right through Glenn Beck who thought the President had orchestrated an Islamic revolution, or whatever. The President loudly and firmly planted himself at precisely the point of having no position at all whatsoever, hinting only vaguely and in mostly veiled terms that Uncle Hosni probs oughta not appoint the fruit of his own loins as his successor and might want to think about maybe not fixing elections quite so dramatically in the future . . . until at last, when it became obvious to every other human being in the world that Mubarack had to go and that the military would probably see to it that he did if it came right down to it if only to preserve their own vaunted legitimacy within the aparatus of the Egyptian state, only then did Barack Obama step to the mic and issue his habitually schoolmarmish declaration that Egyptias too could Win The Future, a chicken in every pot, an MBA in every Jr. Executive Office.
Like the rest of us Obama was scrambling to catch up to what the fuck was happening in Egypt and why a people that stayed obedient and meek for the past three decades suddenly decided enough is enough. But where most of us little people could see that nothing but the removal of Mubarak and the end of his regime would do for the protestors, our socalled betters still thought meaningless gestures like making the chief torturer Mubarak’s vice president could save America’s investment in Egypt.
Egypt is what happens when a people takes its future into its own hands again, to be able to make its own mistakes again and not be afraid anymore. No wonder our elites are so out of touch. They’re not used to this.