Libya today

[Dwarden]

spooky the official support of terrorism unfortunately came from east block

you probably not aware of it, but like 75% of all terrorism groups in middle east and africa was trained and sponsored from Warsaw pact

yes even my country not just helped with 'comrade' style donation of semtex and weapons
but the state had full scale education and training of terrorist members, leaders, officers and such
all overseen by KGB . our STB and other military branches

and even elsewhere in world, the most brutal and most casualties guerrilla and terrorism groups are leftovers from East block support

i'm not saying west block is w/o blood on hand, it's just way less

[PELHAM]

2) Russian and Chinese companies are out of the Libya, all the contracts are suspended - because they didn't support rebellion

Yeah they keep making the same mistake - supporting corrupt dictators. Assad will be out of Syria shortly. You expect Syrian's to forgive what has happened and embrace those who blocked UN resolutions, blocked humanitarian efforts, blocked Arab league progress and looked the other way while people died? Can someone prepare a future thread describing how wonderful life was in Syria under Assad lolz.

If Russia and China did the right thing they would be welcomed back and would no doubt have the majority of the contracts because they work cheap and would be more familiar with all the equipment. Too late now tho, they have supported Assad and ruined any future involvement in building a future for Syria. So things will only get worse as they have no option now but to prop up Assad while more people die. If only they had learned that lesson in Libya?

[vilas]

how about people who fought for freedom of nation oppressed by right wing dictators ? are they terrorists or freedom fighters ? how about Latin America and CIA activity ? how about Lumumba-like examples ?
when there were 2 blocks - there were forces supporting freedom fighting movements, one block is ugly cause noone will support nations which are ruled by minority or nations opressed by government bribed by big corporations

[batto]

So much hypocrisy in this thread.



@PELHAM: If morality is the only thing that matters than I support Assad and I hope that Syrian army will kill as much Sunni terrorists (Free Syrian Army if you wish) as possible. I'm 100% serious. This whole Arab spring joke looks like revolution only on the TV screens. Have you seen the latest joke? Homing pigeon mortar grenade launched by Assad navigating through hall full of Allah Akbar screaming peaceful protesters with Ak-47s and RPG-7s killing 2 peaceful terrorists in the furthest corner and 15 invisible ones?

@Dwarden: You're probably right (I don't have the knowledge). But I don't believe that Sunni terrorists are paid by east.

There are also some videos showing how nicely are people with black skin treated in Libya nowadays.

[PELHAM]

@one_man_clan
Nice video of Gaddafi there - did you know many of those 'supporters' were paid or coerced? E.g. have a look at this from Al-Jazeera a year ago:

17th Feb 2011 - In an apparent effort to control the public narrative in the wake of rare protests that have spread throughout Libya, the country's government is threatening to withdraw scholarship funding from citizens studying in the United States unless they attend pro-government rallies in Washington this weekend, Al Jazeera has learned.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa...949502493.html

So the gracious and great Gaddafi pays your University fees as long as you engage in protests on his behalf? As for morality I think the pictures and deaths of hundreds of people in Homs speaks for itself. Was Marie Colvin/Remi Ochlik a terrorist? Why is the Red Cross still being kept out of Homs and why is there a restriction on reporting from Syria?

[ProfTournesol]

@PELHAM: If morality is the only thing that matters than I support Assad and I hope that Syrian army will kill as much Sunni terrorists (Free Syrian Army if you wish) as possible.

Lol. Sunni are 84% of the Syrian Muslims, who are 90% of the Syrian population. So when they are revolting themselves, they are called terrorists ?

[Serclaes]

Yea, terrorism or freedom fighter depends a lot on the perspective. Through there are some methods a freedom fighter should not use. Like explicitly targetting civilians, like the french resistance did.

[krzychuzokecia]

You are labelling an entire country and government as Islamic Fundamentalists because 112 Libyan Jihadists turned up in Iraq? 112 out of 5.6 million?

No, I'm just labelling Benghazi fundamentalists who now rule the country. And you know what? Majority of Libyan people didn't care about democracy, because they weren't harmed by Ghaddafi regime. They were happy with him, because he gave them... money, education, even WCs! Before Ghaddafi they had Idris who was even worse, actively killing his servants. 40 years ago Libya was in Middle-Ages! Of course, Ghaddafi was killing his political opponents, but they were fundamentalists or former Idris friends. If killing them was bad, why killing Taliban opposition to Karzai is OK?

@Sudayev, not safe? They are holding international football matches in Benghazi?
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/0...81J0FG20120220

Of course they're holding! Benghazi is now one of very few safe places in Libya, they couldn't play this match in Tripoli with all that machine guns shooting behind the entrance.

BTW: check link for Telegraph article, I can only see "Sorry. We cannot find the page you are looking for."

Having a need to build a whole infrastructure to spy on his citizens through Internet and phone (to a level rarely achieved) is not really a sign of a peacefull country, quite the countrary. More a sign of oppressive regime.

Whisper, this sentence is just ridiculous. If you really think like that, you should be the first to throw away PC, TV set and phone and live in a log cabin in mountains, eating reindeer you had hunted.

I didn't realise the social programs the country had.
Very impressive.
But unfortunately the *other* behind-the-scenes state endorsed crime badly overshadows a potential eden.

So know think about Saudi Arabia, ruled by religious minority (Shias, while 90% of citizens are Sunni), with Sharia law, and position of women, which is lower even when comparing with Iran (Iran is pretty liberal on this, they allow women to vote or have their own businesses, Ghaddafi Libya was even better, "European" I could say). Saudi Arabia is criticized by many human rights organizations. So why there's no international pressure on Saudi regime? Why they (or better word: "we" - western countries) are obsessed with Libya or Syria, and don't care about Saudi Arabia or Yemen? Ghaddafi was killed with help of our bombs. But why Mubarak could escape to his house in Sharm el-Sheikh? He was even offered refuge in Israel by Benjamin Eliezer! Only because he was our dictator? And Ghaddafi was not?

unfortunately i don't see any gains for west powers by Libya revolution either ...
most likely deals about Libya natural resources go into hands of non European non USA companies (Chine, Russia, Brazil, India often takes over contracts where west messup)

Overall, I agree with you, but on this you're wrong. China bought some of the Libyan oil fields before revolution, but after Ghaddafi death everything was sold to French and German companies (even fields which were state-owned before - source of Libyan wealth). (Source: Raport WTO 12/2011 - Polish military-oriented magazine, unfortunately article is not on the net, but I bet that there is more on that on western websites/newspapers)

and even elsewhere in world, the most brutal and most casualties guerrilla and terrorism groups are leftovers from East block support

Like Al Queda, created by Saudi people with great help from CIA, to fight with Ruskies in Afghanistan?
Don't get me wrong, of course this example is an exception, communist guerrilla (like Red Khmer) are the worst, but I think that you're still thinking in "we the Good, they the Bad" style. While it's not. See my Mubarak example - another dictator, but he was "our", so nobody helped revolution in Egypt. And I can accept such way of thinking (Ghaddafi - their, Mubarak - our), because it's honest, but this discussion have turned into "good vs bad" - that's why I'm trying to show that Ghaddafi is not all that bad, while our friends are not all that good.

[Dwarden]

that video reminds me on another country ... Iran had plan to redistribute wealth from oil to own citizens too ... which became extremely unpopular to British and USA seen chance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Ir..._d%27%C3%A9tat

result we all know leads some decades later to theocracy in Iran and after some more decades we got ... oh well ...

sure there is difference between nationalization of what someone else built and redistribution of portion from oil income
but there are similar points there

atm, the only states which managed the transition are small tiny states (Kuwait, Dubai, Quatar)

[ProfTournesol]

Like explicitly targetting civilians, like the french resistance did.

What ?