ITN has video on Friday’s dramatic protests in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain (for the latter scroll down).
Some 80 protesters have been killed in the past three days in Libya, and 35 were killed in Benghazi on Friday evening alone. They are challenging the rule of dictator Muammar Qadhafi. Some crowds are pulling down statues of his Green Book, his revolutionary manifesto.
In Yemen, four protesters were killed in the southern port city of Aden. A grenade attack by an unknown assailant on a demonstration in Ta’izz left 35 wounded. The protesters want an end to the dictatorial and nepotistic rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power since the late 1970s.
22 years later, the same brutality, the same dignity.
Tinananmen 1989, Bahrain 2011:
link to recortesdeorientemedio.com
How come we hear so little on Libya? Ghaddafi may have bribed his people and successfully excluded foreign media from his country. Nervertheless, there are very interesting thnigs going in in this country now as well and I´m having a hard time to find anything going beyond “we believe that there are unrests as well”.
link to edition.cnn.com
Also, you can follow things on Twitter: link to twitter.com
There’s much more than just some “unrests” going on. My understanding is that protestors have taken over in the eastern region of Libya (including Benghazi, the country’s second largest city).
Like you mentioned, the government has really done a number on controlling flow of information in and out of the country. Twitter has therefore proven the best way (in my opinion) to receive the most up to date information.
If you want to know where to anticipate serious governmental violence, give some encouragement to west bank palestinians to try something demonstrable, with or without media coverage…..
On the subject of which, the US just vetoed a UN resolution against Israeli encroachment/settlements. It had an opportunity to be even-handed by abstaining, if nothing more, but it couldn’t bring itself to do so. Once again.
UN ambassador Rice, said “it would encourage them to return to the UN whenever an impasse was reached….” which, of course, would have encouraged getting past the intended impasse. Funny how that works.
Funnier was saying, “we reject the legitimacy of the new settlements…”, which gave the US position away. We reject the legitimacy, but will do nothing about it, even if a potential action is to do nothing.
Off topic, I suppose, but this goes to the power of the US in the region.
Updates and links to updates on Libya – horrifying.
link to rubiconman.blogspot.com
If you have a need to be consistently hypocritical in order
to protect “our interests”
then your comments and actions are easy to choose.
You can always change them later if the need arises!
lilGWB
i think the protests will not stop unless all the dictators stepped down and not only in Yemen and Lebya but also in all tyrant regimes.