Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Very interesting POV from a US radio host, interview with RussiaToday

[KanadaHye]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Very interesting POV from a US radio host, interview with RussiaToday

Amen.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Everyone has their own angle... of course it's not hard to take shots at Britain. This is from Iran's Press TV news.

Britain playing 'cat & mouse' in Libya


Saif al-Eslam, the Libyan ruler's son, is a London School of Economics' graduate and a major donor to this UK university, who is brutally killing Libyans to remain in power.

Britain trains the Libyan regime's feared police at the same time when its officials claim they are working to stop bloodshed in the country.

More than 100 officers from the Libyan despot's police force are currently in the UK learning advanced techniques in policing the country as well as techniques to quell violence and street riots, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The Libyan ruler, Muammar Gaddafi unleashed a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests by the country's impoverished people who came out to ask for their basic rights almost 3 weeks ago.

The protests then turned to violent street battles and a near civil war situation after the despotic ruler hired mercenaries and thugs to annihilate any peaceful movement around the country.

As the Libyan nation revolted against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi who has been ruling the country for more than 40 years, the death toll from the brutal crackdown has topped more than 6,000 based on tallies documented by human rights groups.

The uprising, now in its 3rd week, is part of a wave of Islamic awakening, which is jolting the Middle East and North Africa for the past 2 months. The Muslim nations of Egypt and Tunisia recently succeeded in their campaigns to unseat their despotic rulers whom were ruling the countries for decades.

As evidenced by the leaked documents, the UK and US governments have mobilized their spying apparatuses to influence the post-revolution establishment in Egypt and Tunisia to their own benefits and in Libya to help the despot Gaddafi to cling to his brutal rule.

Britain and the US invested huge amounts of money and manpower in Libya after Gaddafi renounced its nuclear weapons program. Actually, the UK government under Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair played a vital role in bringing Libya back to international fold.

Now, it seems near impossible for the rulers of these countries to abandon the lucrative Libyan market and vast oil and gas resources as well as billions of pounds of investments in the country's infrastructure.

The UK government, on the one hand, is mulling over deploying troops to a country where it has been supplying various types of weaponry its regime has been using to suppress its own people, and on the other, it is training Libyan police forces with the most brutal techniques, its agents had been using in other crisis-stricken countries in the Middle East such as Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia to suppress nations.

In the latest of a series of scandals, it has emerged that Britain is training more than 100 Libyan police officers, including a brigadier and a major, in modern techniques. The group is learning forensic skills at Huddersfield University in West Yorkshire.

The Libyan police had already been implicated in a range of human rights violations, by Amnesty International, even before the current uprising, including an incident in 2006 when officers opened fire on demonstrators in Benghazi, killing 12.

The leaked documents showed Huddersfield University has accepted 103 Libyan police officers, some of them fiercely loyal to the despot Gaddafi, on a master's degree course, which began nearly at the end of 2010.

Meanwhile, the Libyan revolutionary forces captured an eight-man team of SAS (Special Air Service), Britain Special Forces, and a junior diplomat in eastern part of the country, where they claimed they were escorting the diplomat on his mission to talk and help the opposition protesters.

However, the British government has refused to confirm the report that the SAS team had been seized in Libya.

"We can neither confirm nor deny the report," said a Foreign Office spokeswoman.

The defence ministry, too, said he would not comment on the special forces, while Defence Secretary Liam Fox told state-run BBC television, "I can confirm that a small British diplomatic team is in Benghazi.

"We are in touch with them but it would be inappropriate for me to comment further," he added.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/168584.html

[Davo88]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Muammar al-Gaddafi about Kurds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O2-DMTmGuY&feature=related

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

[KanadaHye]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Gadhafi slams Western media casualty reports

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has accused international media of misleading people about events taking place in Libya, saying they're not reporting the broad support enjoyed by his government.

In an exclusive interview with France 24 on Sunday, Gadhafi maintained that al-Qaeda is behind the chaos in his country, and denied there have been mass killings.

The United Nations has estimated that as many as 1,000 people have died in the past three weeks during the violent uprising in Libya.

Gadhafi told the French TV news channel that the unrest is the work of al-Qaeda, and claimed Western media have overstated the extent of the political crisis as well as the number of casualties.

“There have been at most 150 to 200 people killed. People should come here and see how many people have been killed. They can come and check among the population, and among the police and the army,” Gadhafi told Khalil Beshir.

Gadhafi was making his comments the same day Reuters reported that forces loyal to Gadhafi had advanced east of the recaptured town of Bin Jawad, heading towards the rebel-held oil town of Ras Lanuf, about 60 kilometres away, according to witnesses.

"I went to Bin Jawad and about 20 kilometres beforehand I saw Gadhafi forces, a large truck and army vehicles, and a fighter jet. They were coming slowly in this direction," Ahmed al-Araibi, a driver, told Reuters.

A BBC reporter also showed Reuters footage taken on Sunday of a truck and warplane near Bin Jawad, heading towards Ras Lanuf.

For his TV interview, Gadhafi wore a long tunic and matching brown headscarf.

On its website, France 24 said at times Gadhafi appeared to harbour resentment for the criticism and sanctions from international leaders.

“Libya has very good relations with the United States, with the European Union and with African countries, and Libya plays a crucial role in regional and world peace,” Gadhafi said.

He compared the clampdown on dissidents to what he described as Israel’s crackdown of al-Qaeda terrorists in Gaza.

“Even the Israelis in Gaza, when they moved into the Gaza Strip, they moved in with tanks to fight such extremists. It’s the same thing here. We have small armed groups who are fighting us. We did not use force from the outset … armed units of the Libyan army have had to fight small armed al-Qaeda bands. That is what’s happened.”


'There is no problem here'

The interviewer asked the Libyan leader about the situation in Benghazi, the country's second-largest city reportedly now under rebel control.

“These armed terrorists in Benghazi, including members of al-Qaeda, did not have clear political demands,” he said.

Gadhafi rejected the suggestion Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would play a mediating role between the Libyan leader and the National Libyan Council.



“There is no problem here," he said. "This mediation does not exist for the moment. What we need is to get rid of these armed gangs.”

Gadhafi told the TV channel that the African Union was sending a fact-finding committee that would show reports about problems were a lie.

He said he is in regular contact with African states.

"I said to them that there is nothing that calls for the situation to be exaggerated, as if there were a problem. Everything is normal."

The Arabic channel Al-Jazeera also carried excerpts from the French television interview.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...-oil-town.html



Christiane Amanpour also reported that the media was making things up and that the stories weren't from actual reporters on the ground. When she arrived in Libya she said she was expecting chaos but in reality there wasn't this huge civil uprising that the media claimed there was.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Looks like the rebels are recruiting children and the UN is supplying them with tanks....


More tanks have appeared in Benghazi in the past few days, but it’s unknown how many rebels are trained to operate armoured vehicles. (Anthony Germain/CBC)

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Zawiya (west of Tripoli) and Bin Jawad (east of Sirte) have been re-taken by Ghazafi.

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Zawiya (west of Tripoli) and Bin Jawad (east of Sirte) have been re-taken by Ghazafi.

It seems that pro-Gaddafi forces have Zawiya surrounded but not cleared and taken the town yet.

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Looks like the rebels are recruiting children and the UN is supplying them with tanks

Clearly an elite unit!

More tanks have appeared in Benghazi in the past few days, but it�s unknown how many rebels are trained to operate armoured vehicles. (Anthony Germain/CBC)

Sitting ducks for Gaddafi's admittedly rather lousy airforce. Gaddafi's army seemingly has field guns and they have been making light work of the rebels technical vehicle.
It's a wonder that the rebels have done as well, as they have.