It’s About Jobs
The Guardian is live-blogging the Arab and Middle East protests – as they happened, and they have set up a separate blog for Libya after protests flared in Tripoli.
Iran and China are also getting nervous about protests.
The crowd at First Draft are covering their home turf in Madison, Wisconsin, with Scout coming back to fill in.
As a public service here is the enemies of people list:
Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali – former first thief President of Tunisia
Hosni Mubarak – former first thief President of Egypt
Ali Abdullah Salen – current first thief President of Yemen
Muammar al-Gaddafi – current first thief Leader of Libya
Mohammed VI – current first thief King of Morocco
Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa – current first thief King of Bahrain
Scott Walker – current Koch Industries vice president for Governor of Wisconsin
This is all about the rich getting richer and everyone else starving. This is about stealing from the poor to give to the wealthy.
5 comments
Is this the same “informed opinion” that stated that Saddam was working on nuclear weapons and Iraqis would greet invading British soldiers with rose petals and kisses? My take: It’s not a choice for me nor thee, but, rather, a choice for the Libyans to make. That is one reason why I have neither blogged nor posted about the situation in Libya or other places in the Middle East… I wish the dictators ill, but past that point, the people who live there are gong to have to figure out what they want to do next, the West has always screwed it up every time they tried to muck around there.
– Badtux the MYOB Penguin
Actually, Badtux, it is Gaddafi’s son who made that “dire prediction”.
The situation is simple: the oil is in the East of the country, but the money has all gone to the West, so people in the East are PO’ed about living in poverty and putting up with the pollution while Tripoli prospers.
I try not to get too involved because that !#$@#$@$ Gaddafi tried to shoot down the aircraft I was in over international waters in the Gulf of Sidra in the 1970s. The fact that a C-130 was able to out-maneuver a pair of Mirage 2000s tells you all you need to know about the Libyan air force.
A civil war will be difficult to arrange when the oil money runs out to pay the mercenaries that have been attacking the protesters in the East.
BTW, just in case you aren’t following the news, Pensacola made the news back on February 9. I wasn’t aware that the Pensacola Naval Station dated back to 1826, and was the only naval yard in the South at the time that the South seceded in 1861…
– Badtux the History Penguin
I saw that this morning.
The wooden ships of the US Navy got a lot of their wood from the Naval Live Oaks area and masts from our pine forests. There is a Fort Pickens monument, although it is better known as Geronimo’s prison, than the bottleneck it was during the Civil War. The Naval Shipyards was the only significant Civil War action fought in Florida.
The Spanish started building ships in Pensacola, and the British made some improvement to the facilities, which well-sited as almost everything necessary for ship building was available locally.
Duffy, my liberal heart is not confounded at all. Without the American Civil War, possibly 15 percent or more of our people would very likely still be in slavery. Would that be OK with you? ’cause it sure as Hell wouldn’t be OK with me!
Was the war unfathomably destructive? No doubt it was. Was there any other way the matter of slavery could have been resolved, given the economic status of the South at the time? We’ll never know, but I doubt it.