Adonis Diaries

Posts Tagged ‘Qadhafi’

“A Taxi to Benghazi” by Marie-Lys Lubrano

Posted by: on: May 2, 2012

“A Taxi to Benghazi” by Marie-Lys Lubrano 

Marie-Lys Lubrano is a French girl with a camera and of about 25 years. She is doing freelance to the French magazine Marianne and she missed out on Tunisia revolt.

As she landed in Cairo, she realized that she missed out on the Egyptian revolt: Mubarak was ousted.

Marie-Lys’ girlfriend Gratiane is planning from Paris to pay a visit to Yemen in turmoil, but obtaining a visa to far away archaic Yemen will have to wait for a long time. Marie-Lys stumbles on an email claiming that an insurrection has started in Benghazi (Libya) and is trying to change Gratiane mind to reconsider and go together to cover the revolt in Libya.

Marie-Lys had no idea that east Libya is on the border with Egypt, and she thought Tripoli was the Lebanese norther port city, and she could not recall the name Qadhafi and who he was: Qadhafi actually erected his tent in 2007 in the Elyse (Paris) before meeting with President Sarkozy…

Marie-Lys is totally ignorant about geography and the Arab world, but she has a camera and is willing to ask plenty of questions and take a lot of risks on front lines battle fields…Marie-Lys’ has not yet experienced fear and how battle fields look like…

Foreign young foreign photographers and correspondents rush to cover dangerous events, not knowing that the country is in a state of war…as long as they have a freelance job…

Marie-Lys converges to the headquarter of Egypt medical association and asks to join the volunteering medical staff heading to Libya. The convoys are organized by the Moslem Brotherhood Party that has the means and the capability of putting together convoys, but a very few physicians and surgeons are members of that Islamic political party.

From Cairo to Alexandria to the border with Libya and off to Benghazi, the eastern Capital of Libya where the insurrection started 3 days ago and hundreds of peaceful demonstrators were killed and injured by Qadhafi forces, shot to kill point-blank.

The hospitals in Benghazi were crumbling with seriously injured demonstrators and the morgue were already overflowing. But the inhabitants managed to chase out Qadhafi armed loyalists that regrouped in towns west of Benghazi.

The first lesson for Marie-Lys was to differentiate between Libya regular army and the battalions of the Presidential guards, formed mostly of African mercenaries: Qadhafi kept the regular army poorly armed because he learned not to trust it.

First, Qadhafi came to power by a military coup d’etat and never relinquished power for 43 years and crushed several military attempts to depose him…

Qadhafi main power relied on his own well armed battalions (kataeb), strong with tanks and modern missiles and airforce and navy…One of the 7 sons of Qadhafi, Khamis, headed a katiba and was considered as the real bloody nemesis to the armed insurgents. You could compare Khamis with the ruthless Maher el Assad, brother of President Bashar of Syria, who head a Syrian katiba and is found everywhere, bloodily putting down upheavals in major cities like Deraa, Homs, Hama, Edleb…

You will discover that Qadhafi has eliminated the postal service 20 years ago and Libyans could not send letters inside or outside Libya and the eastern province of Benghazi was forgotten in the government “budget” for decades and surgeons were paid less than $250 per month and only tribes that were loyal to Qadhafi received stipends…and women had no idea that birth control pills existed or what is a tampon for their monthly periods.  Even the physicians were totally ignorant on birth control and women hygiene practices…

For example, a medical graduate girl of 33 of age had no idea how tampons are used and what for, and she believed that having intercourse during the period could result in certain death: She thought that this knowledge was in medical books until she recalled that it was the Koran that prohibited this practice…

It dawned on Marie-lys that Libya is in a state of war when she realized that women were nowhere to be found: Women were locked in their houses for fear of being raped if they stepped outside, kind of opportunities waiting to be taken advantage of…One surgeon begged his sister physician to visit the hospital and help with her skills, but she would not dare come out and stayed home cooking to the extended family (living a dozen in crowded two rooms) and doing laundry…

However, during mass demonstrations, it was the women who raised the most politically oriented slogans of liberty, equality, freedom, job opportunities… while the men kept shouting “Allah wa Akbar” ad nauseam…

Marie-Lys insisted to joining insurgent and medical teams to the front lines and she was sheltered and cared for and kept close to the heads of the groups.  One insurgent admitted that he would have retreated many times but refrained as Marie-Lys kept pushing forward and he was not to be considered a coward by a girl…

Qadhafi counteroffensives were close to entering Benghazi when the French young philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy showed up in Benghazi and claimed that France officially recognized the transitory government CNT, taking care of the Benghazi city services…

Marie-Lys was speechless because Bernard-Henri was not a political emissary, even if he claimed to have a direct phone line with president Sakozy…Bernard-Henri and Sarkozy have demonstrated for years their antipathy to Arabs and to Islam, and Bernard-Henri missed out on the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.

It turned out that France got engaged in insuring a “No fly Zone” over Libya and its airforce bombed the advancing columns of tanks in south Benghazi… Before France military engagement, Libyans had vacated the towns and cities in the eastern provinces and were heading toward Egypt border…

Marie-Lys followed the medical teams and ambulances to the front lines and witnessed gruesome cases of atrocities…At one point, the NATO purposely bombed advancing insurgents because the “red lines” kept shifting and the revolt had to obey the NATO military and political strategy…

The insurgents were organized by professional colonels, officers and soldiers of the regular army, otherwise, the insurgents headed too often to certain slaughterhouse expeditions…

Marie-Lys kept misplacing her backpack where she kept her pills and laptop…Her brother had to travel to the borders in Egypt to bring Marie-Lys two bags of everything she lacked. The brother was weeping and was totally terrorized that his sister is insisting on remaining in Libya and he stayed on the border for another week, waiting for his sister to change her mind and go back with him to France…But he respected her wishes…and she stayed another month to witness very depressing events and glorious ones too.

For example, you had this insurgent who blew an ambulance with the team of medical personnel inside, simply because the car was turned toward the opposite direction of the front line: He thought the ambulance belonged to the loyalist Qadhafists…

Many Libyans with secure jobs and easy comfortable life-styles in the USA, England and France returned to Benghazi to join the insurrection and volunteer driving ambulances if they were not surgeons or skilled in matters needed by the war…

There was nothing much to eat in Libya: packs of juices and the French “Laughing Cow cheese” (La vache qui ri).  Now and then, the insurgents would cook pasta with tomato sauce,and Marie-Lys learned to dip her hand in the common pate and eat voraciously.

Electricity was frequently cut off and thus, no running water to drain the toilets in the small overcrowded houses. The members of the extended families had to walk 200 meters to the closest dune for relief in order to keep the stench at a manageable distance…

Marie-Lys didn’t have to spend a nickel: everything was free, including staying in hotels and meals.  A few illuminated Libyans would give her all the money in their pocket, on the ground that the Libyan dinar was worthless.

Families had no shame welcoming the photographer in their poor homes and sharing the little they had.  You witness all kinds of weird mankind brotherhood behaviors in such kind of drastic revolutionary spirit…against a loathed dictator…

Libyans who got fight training in Afghanistan were not that many in Libya when the revolt began, but you could recognize one: They are aloof with long beard, whisling as they walk amid bombs and rockets pouring around…They are not soldiers but expert in manipulating rocket launchers and RPG…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who are those “Christians of the Orient”? Who is playing Custer’s fiddle?

Posted by: on: October 25, 2011

Who are those “Christians of the Orient”? Who is playing Custer’s fiddle?

I have published many articles on the various Christian religious sects, before Byzantium Empire, during and after. Actually, the main theme is not about the Christian sects in the Orient, or even about minority religious sects, but what the Arab people means by freedom and equal rights.

It is known that this crazy General of George Custer used to play the fiddle as his troops were massacring the American Indians. Nero did play the guitar as Rome burned.

Lebanese journalist Samir Attallah published a piece in the daily Al Nahar.  It goes( with rearrangement and editing):

“I received an electronic mail at my bureau of the daily “Middle-East”. The letter was from the Iraqi immigrant, settled in Hamburg, Mahdi Abbas. Mahdi related how he witnessed the decapitation of the successor to the Iraqi throne in 1958 by the “revolutionaries”.  The head of this Hashemite son of the monarch from Mecca (appointed King by the mandated power England) was dangled from a building. The ground floor was the “Restaurant Kamar el Karhk”. One revolutionary was cutting the fingers of the monarch and throwing them to the crowd, asking for more body parts.”

The 60’s and 70’s witnessed a succession of military coups in the Middle-East (especially in Iraq and Syria). The main excuse is the failing of governments in confronting the new Zionist State. This letter of Mahdi arrived as an US drone assassinated the US/Moslem Salafist citizen, Anwar el Awlaki, in Yemen. President Obama made drone assassination his trade-mark: Over 2,000 are on the black list to be assassinated with utmost prejudice.

Don’t you think a criminal mind is the same, regardless of the means employed? In the time of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, duelists used to shake hands before shooting at one another. There got to be other alternatives than violent means to resolving matters.  For example, Qadhafi proclaimed in a mass rally that there are no prisons in Libya. Why? He had just executed 1,200 detainees in their sleep in the prison of Abu Salim prison.

Recent history shows that those who cut to pieces their adversaries ended up being cut to pieces, jailed for life, tortured, and turned one against another:  The slaughterhouse resumed for many decades in these dictatorial and absolute monarchy regimes. For example, Rifaat el Assad, brother of the late Syrian dictator Hafez el Assad, ordered his Special Forces to shell the Presidential Palace as he witnessed his brother in a coma in the year 2000!

The Soviet Union fell and nobody died, even in a traffic accident. (This does not exclude that President Yeltsin shelled the Parliament (the Duma) because the deputies obstructed his policies…).

Latin America was a hotbed of horror dictatorship, under the protection and support of the successive US administrations.  Things have evolved and changed toward democratic systems without this crazy death toll in the Arab World. It might be humoristic that Arab people are demanding freedom and equal rights. We are acting as the American Indians: All that we are asking is a piece of land to live on!

What’s the difference between the American Indians and the Christian sects in the Orient? Both communities were there first on the land, and when they are granted monopoly in selling cigarettes, they consider this gesture as a gift from heaven. Former US Senator from South Dakota, James Abu Rizk, learned to defend the Palestinian cause from defending the American Indian cause.  Samir Attallah asked former US senator George Mc Govern: “What’s with Abu Rizk now?” He replied: “It appears that the American Indian cause is more feasible to be won than the Palestinian cause”

Who are those “Christian sects from the Orient”? Media coverage is suspect: They focus on who is to protect them from extinction! As if a green light have been given for another round of genocides. Arab poets die in exile…Julius Caesar said: “Who am I to not forgive? Forgiving extend the life of a throne”  Attallah mentioned: “I once complained to a book shop keeper in Ottawa of the maltreatment that Lebanese passport holders experience in airports.” He replied: “Have you tried a German passport after 1949?”

Why the Christian sects in the Orient have to immigrate if they are the heart of the Arabic community? Why should they disappear to greener pastures when they represented the “awakening of Arab dignity” during the Ottoman Empire and during the periods of the mandated powers of France and England? (read note 1)

The Christian sects of the Orient were the administrative backbone of the successive Arab/Islamic Empires, and they were the translators of Greek and Roman manuscripts for the Arabic caliph.. The Greek culture would have vanished long time ago if the Christian sects of the Orient failed to transfer and translate culture to the Arabic language…

Note 1: Since the 19th century, most secular and national political parties and civic movements in the Middle-East were founded by Christian Arabs. For example, the reigning Baath party in Syria was created by the Christian Michel Aflak.  Most of the leaders of the Communist parties were Christians. All these political parties and their charismatic leaders were persecuted by the Ottoman Empire, the mandated poweres of England and France, and by the governments after independence of the States.

You wonder: “Is the Arab/Islamic spirit anathema to secular and national tendencies?” Fact is, only after successful military coups did Moslem leaders adopt nationalistic and occasionally secular laws. (More on that topic in later posts) 

Note 2: Post inspired by a piece of journalist Samir Attallah in the daily Al Nahar under the title” Restaurant Kamar (Moon) el Karhk”

Note 3:  I stumbled on a related article that I posted in 2008: Readers of my blog give me opportunity to re-edit older posts  https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/christians-of-the-orients-they-are-you/

“

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To protect civilian casualties? How’s the UN prosecuting its involvement?

Posted by: on: September 30, 2011

To protect civilian casualties? How’s the UN prosecuting its involvement?

Former French ambassador to Libya, Francois Nicolo, wrote in the French daily Le Monde:

“In the sky, large planets reflect the path of light.  On earth, it is the superpower States that distort the principles of international laws according to their vested interests. This fact was demonstrated on the Libyan ground.

On March 17, the UN council agreed to taking all necessary steps, save land invasion, to protect Libyan civilians (from a brutal dictator Qadhafi).

Two days later, a summit held in Paris decided to execute the UN resolution.  Since then, the superpower forces of the US, France, England, and the NATO have dropped thousands of tons of bombs in Libya, in a conflict that quickly turned to civil war.

This massive foreign intervention has proven how considering the protection of civilian can be used as an excuse for States private interests.

It is going to be extremely hard to bring the proposal of “protecting civilians” as a viable and plausible excuse in further UN assemblies for direct foreign interventions in other States.”

Ann Mary Sloter wrote in The Atlantic: “The discussions on foreign intervention in Libya are considering the 3 consequences that occurred in Libya:

First, Foreign interventions change the nature of autonomy in States succumbing to such interventions,

Second, Has the decision to intervene in Libya bad, good, or lead to nothing of value?

Third, Should the US and the other foreign States intervene in Middle-East troubles?”

It is reported that Libya suffered over 60,000 casualties since the beginning of the civil war.

Would the UN have the guts to publish what was the ratio of casualties done by “collateral damages” and “friendly fire” in a country of barely 4 million and as vast as the US?

A State leader said in the UN General Assembly:

“The Security Council in the UN is practicing political feudalism.  Since the creation of the UN, we witnessed 65 wars that, not only the UN could not prevent, but many superpower States contributed to igniting and supporting these wars, and directly participated in these wars. The veto power States (monopolizing nuclear arsenal), enjoyed by the US, Russia, China, France, and England, have started most of these wars for their own geopolitical interests.

I declare that the veto right is contrary to the charters of the UN.  Who gave these superpower States this right?

How these States secured permanent seats in the security council?

It is written in the UN Charters that all recognized State are equal. Are we indeed?

The veto right is illegal and dictatorial in nature.

I demand that the prerogatives of the Security Council be transferred to the UN General Assembly.  We can no longer accept to be considered as decorative States.  We are being mocked at every meeting. We are simply entitled to deliver speeches.

We are marginalized. The superpower States don’t give a hoot of the remaining recognized States.

We refuse to be allocated a few seats in the Security Council (10 out of 5 seats) in order to fight us.

Security Council was instituted as a tool of terror and to sanction States that disagree with the superpower States dicta.

Security Council never condemned one of its members.

Security Council made us wear cloths dating from the 40’s.

I demand that Africa, the African Union, the Arab League, the European Union, the Latin American Union, and world organizations… have a seat in the Security Council.

I demand that the UN starts investigating crimes against humanity and genocide perpetrated by the superpowers.

Why the genocide witnessed in Rwanda, the Palestinian camps of Sabra, Chatila, Jenine, and Gaza are not investigated by the UN?

Why Israel should have the privileged of denying entrance to UN investigative teams?…”

Suppose that this speech was delivered by Qadhafi in 2009, would the facts be considered nul and void, simply because voiced by Qadhafi?

Would the rights of neglected 120 States to enjoying recognition as equal in the UN be mocked and sidetracked, simply because Qadhafi (the lunatic) expressed their opinions?

Note: Massive leaks and evidence are coming out proving that France and England have planned (politically and militarily) ousting Qadhafi, way before the Tunisian upheavals.  Why? Qadhafi decided to purchase Russia military hardware and declined the offers of France and England.  Does anyone think that superpowers get involved out of the compassion in their hearts for foreign civilians?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Fleeing to Hell” by Samir Atallah and Qadhafi

Posted by: on: September 28, 2011

“Fleeing to Hell” by Samir Atallah

This post is inspired by an article published by the Lebanese journalist Samir Atallah in the daily Al Nahar Sept. 28.  I will be mostly translating liberally from Arabic, and not in the order the article proceded.

“The French daily “Humanitee” is celebrating its 107 birthday.  It was turned to a communist media in 1920 and the communist party still hold 40% of its shares. Joan Baez sang in the festivity along with Jane Fonda…You had the impression that the “Arab Spring” revolutions are behind us, a momentary curiosity, and part of history…

Late French President, Charles de Gaulle, said that “Religion is an extension to moral standards. The prophet has to apply his own guidelines and principles…I will call the first part of my Memoires “Years of hope“.

Hope always sounds a slap and an offense to whoever utter that word in the Arab World: Hope is understood as an offense to reality and frustration, contrary to the golden dictum “Silence is gold and keeping your tongue warm is the road to safety and security“.

What could be worst than encouraging social civil wars by keeping silent of the causes that will ultimately ignite a civil war?

Qadhafi wrote a short story titled “Fleeing to Hell“.  He said: “Not only you fail, but you also fail to learn the lessons…What set you apart is that you are unable to recognizing right from wrong no matter how you deny it…The citizens want you to build a road to the sea, to plant the garden, to kill the dogs and replace dogs with cats…”

Maximilian Robespierre, the bloodiest French revolutionary was the role model of Qadhafi. Why? Because Robespierre understood that the people are heartless and practiced the motto “Do not spare anyone of your companions and never trust the people“.

Qadhafi learned from Romania dictator Ceucesco to build underground tunnels under every property you live-in, in  order to secure an exit route. But this tactic never worked.

Indeed, Qadhafi fled to hell, and his people got out of hell.  And returned to hell…

Still, Qadhafi keeps shouting and threatening to exterminate all the rats and roaches that rose to dislodging his regime.

Communism did not end because of any success story of capitalism, but for the arrogance they ruled the people, as if they never learned from their Caesar the Emperor.

Communism played the game of Russian roulette, while liberal capitalism is playing Las Vegas kinds of roulette. The consequence of any political system that enslaves the mind of its citizen.

The western societies lambasted the oriental people of accepting their fate…What kind of rational processes the west is applying nowadays? It is a wide open casino:  The Greeks want money and enter the European Union totally drunk, the Italians are stealthy inserting their hands in other States pockets, and the US enters all guns out, hoarding the cash register and funding the largest army that mankind ever imagined.

Charles de Gaulle decided to retreat to his house in the Boiserie as he realized that his staying in power is liable of initiating mass upheavals…

Apparently, the period of Orientalism is not over yet: The western societies see the Arab World in romantic visions, as exceptions to the rules: All these mass popular upheavals are just attempts at looking out the window, but not a purposeful decision to exiting from the doors of jails…

Western scholars still believe that the only rational mind was Ibn Khaldun (6 centuries ago) and no rational mind and leader succeeded Ibn Khaldun.

(Sprawling cities, surrounded with shantytowns, dying out of boredom in Amman, Algeria, Riyadh…

Sprawling cities transformed into caves, tunnels, and bunkers in Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Gaza, Syria…to be followed by Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Death is not depressing: It is the Wham! The silence afterward…

Posted by: on: July 8, 2011

Death is not depressing:  It is the Wham! The silence afterward

A second ago, you have this lively creature, and then it ceases to move; that must be depressing.  It is like a vigorous mosquito, stinging you and harassing you…and wham!  You feel relieved, but can’t shake off this feeling of depression at the sight of this inanimate so little thing, which captured all your attention a short while ago, and covered the entire room with its buzzing…

Luckily, we feel depressed on rare occasions (don’t we? Occasions that catalyze our depressive moods are rarer than Fukushima catastrophe!):  You are pretty sure the mosquito is dead, but the body cannot be located anywhere.  Legally, there is no ground to feeling depressed.  It is like the security forces of a violent dictator or absolute monarch:  The first fundamental they learn is “First, Dig the Mass Grave”.  You don’t want families parading the “martyrs” in open streets and displaying the distorted bodies in open gaskets, and chanting victory or “down with…”.

It is not death that is depressing: It is this sustained calm and silence, before the storm, a calamity about to strike.  It is like a brutal dictator watching a lively and peaceful demonstration down his window:  He cannot feel depressed at this junction!  Suddenly, his security forces disperse the marchers; the streets are emptied, and quietude is re-established.  The next day…Wham! A few officers who had been filmed live disfiguring a cadaver, suddenly disappear.  Capital mistake:  You forgot that the dictator should not be given any reason to feeling depressed. Sort of a strong correlation existing between feeling depressed and feeling guilty.

It is like a close friend is reduced to being paraplegic; his brain is still functioning full speed, and even much better than in his agitated lively state,  nothing works.  No matter how you prepare your attitude to acting upbeat, it never works, you are a lousy actor when depressed. 

It is like you are engaged in a crazy discussion, and somehow you “misplaced” a word, a sentence, and your crazy companion fidget, sit rigid, opened mouthed…No matter how righteous you thought your position was, you feel guilty, you feel depressed.  That bastard should have kept blubbering incoherently:  That is the main reason for discussion.

Only lively movement can extend the feeling of living and hope in the slithering and volatile future.  Society worship youth for a fundamental reason:  Youth give the impression that life is resuming its course; we vanquished apathy and indifference.  It is like you water a parcel of something you saw a few days ago, and a morning exhibits a green something covering you labor. Keep moving and acting!

Qadhafi mastered the skill of “changing everything frequently, in order to changing nothing”:  Keeping the momentary Capital, the institutions, the Constitution, and technocrats were to be kept momentary realities:  They are to be frequently transformed, displaced, retrograded, reinstituted…in order not to change anything in the environment of power he feels most comfortable in.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

adonis49

adonis49

adonis49

June 2023
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  

Blog Stats

  • 1,522,431 hits

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.adonisbouh@gmail.com

Join 770 other subscribers

Blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: