Borzou Daragahi reports: "A Libyan general has switched sides in one of two fiercely contested western cities that have been strongholds of the opposition to Moammar Kadafi, state television said Tuesday. Fierce fighting continued in the city of Zawiya, which has emerged as one of two key battlegrounds in the area around the capital, Tripoli. Although Kadafi controls the capital, his opponents have seized much of the eastern part of the country and are working on forming a competing government."
Anti-aircraft rounds sit on the roof of a pickup truck in Ras Lanuf, Libya, 03/08/11. (photo: Luis Sinco/LA Times)
Libyan General Joins Rebels in Zawiya
09 March 11
State TV reports that Maj. Gen. Khalid Shahmah has switched sides. Meanwhile, government officials deny rumors that Moammar Kadafi will resign.
Libyan general has switched sides in one of two fiercely contested western cities that have been strongholds of the opposition to Moammar Kadafi, state television said Tuesday.
Fierce fighting continued in the city of Zawiya, which has emerged as one of two key battlegrounds in the area around the capital, Tripoli. Although Kadafi controls the capital, his opponents have seized much of the eastern part of the country and are working on forming a competing government.
In an "urgent" on-screen caption, a state-controlled television station reported that Maj. Gen. Khalid Shahmah had joined the rebels in Zawiya. It did not further identify the general or clarify his role in the military.
Droves of officials have defected from Kadafi's regime. On Tuesday, Musa Kuni, former consul general to the nearby country of Mali, appealed to Libyans of ethnic Tuareg descent like him to join the opposition.
Opposition leaders accuse the government of recruiting mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa to fight anti-Kadafi forces. The rebel spokesman in Misurata, the other battleground city in western Libya, said his side had captured several fighters from Mali and Chad.
In the eastern city of Benghazi, Kadafi opponents said they had confirmed that some mercenaries were Algerian and that a downed pilot was a Syrian.
Despite some high-profile defections, officials have defiantly denied rumors that Kadafi was considering resigning, and he appeared briefly late Tuesday at a Tripoli hotel housing many foreign journalists.
"The leadership of the revolution is not a presidential or royal position from which Moammar Kadafi could step down," Kadafi's son Saadi said in a broadcast interview. If the leader were to step down, he said, "an unmerciful civil war will take place" similar to that of Somalia or Afghanistan.
Saadi also said his brother Seif Islam and a group of advisors had been running the country for the last four years, with the patriarch providing only overall guidance.
A spokesman for Kadafi opponents in Benghazi denied reports that they had agreed not to prosecute the dictator if he resigned within 72 hours.
"We will not negotiate over the blood of our people," said the spokesman, Abdulhafith Ghuga. "There has been no proposal put in front of us and the regime is still killing people with heavy artillery."
Times staff writer Raja Abdulrahim in Benghazi contributed to this report.
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Something is drastically wrong with an educational system that equates war with strength.
I write as a retired public secondary school teacher of literature and writing who, for more than 32 years, expected and encouraged my students to get emotionally as well as intellectually involved with the characters, themes, and moral as well as social and political issues we discussed in class, from 7th grade through 12th grade.
This kind of education can be, and IS being, done in thousands of public schools all across the U.S.
All it needs is a supportive school board and community.
But the one thing I would change if I had a do-over would be to study more of the humanities in the broad sense, but especially the written arts of literature, drama, and poetry, because I think the people who produce works in those fields are the ones with the clearest insights into the human condition -- which is ultimately what it's all about.
As for economics, I'm recommending the graphic narrative, "Economix" (economixcomix. com). The author is NOT an economist but a journalist, self-taught in economics, and he gets it right, as in "how it REALLY works." The book includes an excellent account of how the academic field got to its present hideous state.
AFRICA's RICHEST NATION
Hillary Clinton, "We came, we saw, he died!" for her financing, arming & murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi over Libya's universal-medic are (is Bernie next?), education, employment, housing & Africa's highest standard of living. Libya was #1 financier of development-aid & investor in Africa's essential service infrastructure. Hillary's slave to world trillionaire OLIGARCHs who couldn't stomach Muammar's (Jewish mother) implementation of the gold-based African Dinar for all oil & commodity trading.
HIllary's record of approving CARPET-BOMBING of no-Afghani-hija ckers-Afghanist an, no-weapons-of-m ass-destruction -Iraq & her determinative role as Secretary of State of Libya. Hillary's State-departmen t operatives finance, arm & supply foreign mercenaries in Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt etc. because she worships oligarch wealth & Israel 1st.
THE DEEP STATE
Greater-Israel's Oded-Yinon-Plan OYP & its US daughters Project-for-a-N ew-American-Cen tury PNAC & New-World-Order NWO advanced by Netanyahu (supported by Hillary) for these destabilization , arming of our-perceived-e nemy's-enemy, bombing campaigns are clearly scheduled. General Westley Clarke describes being informed of the US role in OYP's taking out 7 countries. http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166
How are you doing?
As to how this might be facilitated, consider 9/11 as the U.S. version of the Reichstag Fire, then think of the impact of another 9/11-type event.
In which context also reflect on the probability what the Democrats are really doing by nominating Hillary -- this given the fact both parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of the One Percent -- is helping usher in overt fascism in the person of Trump, the newest incarnation of der Fuehrer.
Read it again and enjoy
Hillary Clinton will always overcompensate for being a woman
by trying to be tougher than any man out there in foreign policy and military matters.
She is more dangerous than John McCain!
unlike rump, crud and rabidio - hill and bernie endorse obama's treaty with iran
GOP candidates all prefer to bomb, bomb, bomb - bomb, bomb, iran, back to the stone age!
dan, you are unable to draw rational distinctions between parties, candidates or warmongers = you lack judgment - so i'm not supporting your bid for comment of the year!
- go bernie!
Aye -some of which she was the causative element.
So do YOU think the US of Armaments should continue to invade nations in which it's no welcome, thereby making more increasingly fanatical, dedicated enemies?
And do YOU believe in "American exceptionalism"?
Then go ahead a vote for she who represents this self-perpetuati ng war machine!
s a pathological liar and warmonger. FEEL THE BERN. Please go to www.citizensagainstplutocracy.org and take the pledge: BERNIE or Green. Give our BERNIE leverage @ the July convention!
It's also clear they and we were supplying weapons and training to these "protesters" from day one. JUST like Syria.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/06/libya-gadhafi-french-spies-rebels-support.html#
milk producers are gonna hate # REDPILLED!
- stein is a 3rd-party candidate for national office, like nader in 2000 - the only thing a green candidate can accomplish in federal elections is to siphon progressive votes from the dem candidate!
didn't stein run in 2012? how did that work out for greens? greens are like a guy who goes to the frig, takes out the milk, opens the top, smells it's yeck!, spoiled, puts it back, and every four years takes it out again, just to see if it's fresh!
the irony is that stein is a competent candidate - like bernie, she should run for office as mayor, do a good job, run for office as senator or governor, as bernie proved a 3rd party candidate can win, and then and only then, run for prez as a dem! - before she prances around spoiling dem prez candidacies!
the greens' mission is to ruin dem candidacies because they maintain that there is ABSOLUTELY no difference between dems and zomblicans, which only shows inability to judge, lack of critical thought - when you believe in things that you don't understand, you're gonna suffer! - stevie wonder
greens haven't pulled a nader yet, but they won't quit trying! - go bernie! - and, in the general election, go dem!
Robbee, please keep posting these!
Way to CALL 'em ! Well observed. The Hillary Trollsters are not here,
of course, because there is *NO* way to defend THIS stuff.
Beyond that, however, they are not PAID to raid the policy pages. They are ONLY paid to sow fear, panic, hate and discontent relative TO the horse race.
Their job is to discourage Sanders supporters EARLY ON, and to get them to support the PRECISE sh*t we see above, but hopefully (on the part of the Trolls) without having the *SLIGHTEST* idea of what we ARE underwriting and personally approving with a vote for Clinton.
Are "Bernie" or Trump or ANY of the approved candidates likely to risk offending that country by actually voting to stop funding that country and the wars for its benefit?
Which "INDUSTRY".
hint: oil
Greater-Israel's Oded-Yinon-Plan & its US daughters Project-for-a-N ew-American-Cen tury PNAC & New-World-Order NWO are based in massive destabilization through arming foreign mercenaries religious madmen in conjunction with key oligarch-servan ts such as Hillary documented in French media & Hillary's emails. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/06/libya-gadhafi-french-spies-rebels-support.html#
While it takes all 7 billion of us contributing, in diverse ways to create the world economy, western colonial nations such as US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, NATO & Israel are willing to take the gifts of others, when western main contribution to world economy is hidden ownership, command, control & war.
Westerners are raised in glorification of 'colonial-settl er', our highest ideal, yet we're unable to openly or publicly dialogue through issues in debate or to employ nature's livelihood gifts. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues
Damn ! Absolutely the *BEST* post I have seen all week.
KUDOS - Multiple KUDOS, Douglas Jack, thank you for such a highly informative, impeccably analyzed, and deeply well-thought-th rough contribution.
@ Billy Bob
Boldly Stated, both.
Unassailably accurate, both.
We've been fed the same tired line since 1968, when Humphrey, who supported LBJ's serial escalations of the Vietnam-Southea st Asia War Crime right up until a couple of weeks before the election, and who didn't even enter the primaries lest the unpopularity of the war lead to his defeat wherever he contested the peace candidates, presided over the Chicago police riots.
Ever since, we have been given ever-more reactionary and bloodthirsty candidates from both parties, with the exception of George McGovern, who was abandoned by the national party and the corrupt union leadership for being too pacifistic, and then blamed for losing to Nixon, whose dirty tricks were only exposed to get rid of detente.
It is true that the Rethuglicans have always led the way toward genocidal imperialism abroad and police-state fascism at home, but it is also true that the DemocRats have been panting in their wake every election -- and insisting, like Margaret Thatcher did for the UK, that progressives and genuine liberals have no choice but to go along lest the Evil Republicans nominate a Scalia to the Court. Which, you may or may not recall, resulted in every Senate Democrat voting in support of him, as well as of Anthony Kennedy, presented for approval in the last year of Reagan's presidency.
Well, without taking any pledge in re Bernie, I am not about to vote for a blood-dripping war hog. Sorry.
Some of the same people who now call for unconditionally supporting whomever the Democrats nominate called, likewise, for unconditional support for Obama [or, earlier in the season, for Hillary] in 2008. Those who bothered to research, or who had more than a nodding acquaintance with the history of the last few decades, and thus were less enthusiastic about "change," were pilloried then as now for being purists and the like.
As Noam Chomsky, who incidentally supports electing Democrats on the at least arguable point that minor differences between the parties may, given the immense power of the USan empire, lead to major differences in the lives of those outside our borders, has said, every one of the post war presidents since Nuremberg would, if we as Justice Robert Jackson pledged held ourselves to the standards we invoked in hanging the Nazi high command, have been hanged for crimes against humanity.
I'm afraid that any minor differences that still existed during the Reagan-Bush years have, with the Clintons and Obama, faded to insignificance. Hillary is a warmonger and a neo-con, and has never expressed any regret for the horror show she insisted on inflicting on Libya.
Sanders is also not free of the tentacles of the Zionist state, but at least he is not looking for places to change regimes in, and favoring military action to effect those overthrows.