Libya Exploding

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As I heard it (admittedly on CNN), the Lybian military has largely decided to side with the protesters.

Oh, and Gadaffi's security chief or something defected and claims he has proof that Gadaffi gave the Lockerbie bombing.

Things aren't looking good.

 

Or they are looking good ... depending on your point of view.

 

I'm not sure about "largely", but yes, there were some pretty drastic cases. A few days back two fighter pilots were ordered to bomb some city, they took their Mirages, said the Libyan version of ".... that, .... you and .... your little dog, too" and flew to Malta.

Some of the army is still with Gaddafi, though - I'd say the majority, but I obviously can't be sure. If more turned against him, he'd be done. As it is, I hope he is either run out of the country or captured, and it happens as soon and with as little innocent blood spilled as possible.

BTW, I wonder if the EU will get to be a bit faster with the reconstruction here. If Libya descends into chaos, you could get hundreds of thousands of refugees... not to mention the regular tide of African immigrants that would pass through there.

Edit: I came across articles in our press that in the latest interview the former justice minister Mostafa Mohammad Abdeljalil gave for Al-Jazeera (the one where he supposedly confirms Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing) he also said Gaddafi was behind the AIDS outbreak for which several Bulgarian nurses were accused, convicted, tortured, sentenced to death and eventually "ransomed". Wow, if that's true...

 

Ghaddafi is apparently employing a lot of African mercs. They are loyal to him, as long as he has the money, but once in country, they have no way back and no choice but to fight.

Another thing to consider are tribal loyalties within the army vis a vis Ghaddafi ,which are difficult to assess from the outside..

 

Yes, I wrote that with a big grin on my face. I should have included the big grin in my post.

 

Out of couriosity, when did it become "Gadhafi". I seem to remember back in the 1980s that he was referred to as Qaddafi.

 

Over the years I've seen it spelled Quddafi, Gadaffi, Kudaffi, Khaddafi, and Qudaffe. Unrelated, I've also seen al Qaeda, Al Queda, and al-kaeda. And Al Franken.

It's a terrorist plot to make us fail our google searches.

 

Americans have shown a history of enjoying playing with spelling, and the english of bastardising foreign words for their own dictionaries

Also arabic script features curly characters read backwards.

You can't trust a curly backwards grapheme!

 

I don't think the spelling matters, he'll get an unmarked grave somewhere and all traces of him will be erased.

 

Say what you will, any organization that puts Quaddaffi on a human rights commission loses my respect, justifications and excuses be buggered.

Is Reagan still alive? If he is, and if he is healthy enough to understand what's going on, he must be very pleased to see old Moammar finally getting what he deserves. I liked this line -- I wonder if it'll get results?

 

Well, Qaddafi outlasted Reagan by a fair amount, so I'd say the last laugh will be given in the afterlife. But yes, that "get out of your houses" line could be quite ambiguous - perhaps he's telling his supporters to get the heck out of the country?

 

LKD,
Reagan is not alive, but he also isn't quite dead. That's primarily because the GOP has chosen to reanimate him to lead the party again.

​

 

Hush, now, we should be at least that respectful of the dead...

 

Sick, disrespectful, and funny as hell

 

how many die in the process?

 

Despots are always difficult to remove. They never go peacefully.

 

It's a matter of dialect. If you take how the proper spelling of his name would be pronounced in proper literary Arabic, Qadhaffi, Qadhafi, or even Quathaffi could all be appropriate spellings. The Arabic sound library translates very poorly into English, with more than a few "orphan letters" that have only vague English approximations, and gulf dialect pronounces the "qaf" as a "gaf" -- meaning that they drink "Gahua" (coffee) while the rest of the Arab world is drinking "Qahua."* Same drink, same spelling, different pronunciation. This difference in regional pronunciation is the likely explanation behind the recent shift in the English spelling of Qhadhaffi's name.

* In Eqypt, they often drop the "qaf" entirely and drink "aahua". Due to the way Egyptians substitute the "qaf" with a glottal stop. they no longer refer to their capital city by name. "Al Qahira" (Cairo) without the "qaf" becomes "Al Aahira" -- which comes to close for comfort to one of Arabic's many words for "prostitute". Egypt also uses a hard G instead of a soft one (Modern Standard Arabic doesn't actually have a hard G sound), which can cause confusion as well. And don't even get me started on the bastardized mess that constitutes the almost incomprehensible Moroccan dialect...

 

Heh, where do you know all that from? Don't tell me you've ordered hookers on your trips to the Middle East .