Libya, once again...

So the Libyan crisis is in the final stage, not regarding the outcome.There are so many things to comment on this, it's hard to know where to start. OK, so the rumours that Gaddaffi had escaped by a plane supplied by South Africa and awaiting asylum in Angola were not verified. Obviously solid information is hard to come by in this conflict; other rumours said that Gaddaffi's son had escaped from prison, and the takeover of Tripoli seems to be a scam, or, as it were, propaganda. Gaddaffi is going all but quietly, and his latest trick is to place snipers on every street corner to nail down the cheering crowds. I raised my eyebrows on hearing that Russian Federation asked the West to stay out of Libyan politics after the prospective fall of the colonel; I suspected it had to do with the fact that the two abstaining powers in the security council had divided Libyan between them, with Russian sending in arms, and CHina buying the oil fields. I also noticed that the U.S and Great Britain were fighting between them about who should take the credit for the fall of Gaddaffi, each claiming that they were the essential power in the toppling. So far, the toppling seems uncertain, and Seif-Al-Islam has been laughing all the way to the microphone, stating that the ruffian rebels had walked into a trap. The large number of people supporting Gaddaffi is troubling; - he may have been a great leader in the late 60s, but he hasn't excactely proved his statemanship the lastest half year. This is even truer regarding the troubles in Egypt; there it would seem that almost half the population support Mubarak; - does this also mean that they support male chauvinism, sharia, and want no part of a democracy with elected leaders?
If every Gaddaffi-supporter fights with guns to the last blood drop, the final battle will indeed be a bloody affair.

The European popular risings

There is still much to comment on in international politics. The rise and fall of Strauss-Kahn is altogether a sad story, and hardly ever has been seen before this degree of pre-trial judgement by the media, so let's hope to God that he is guilty. If his only defense is that he thought all this was voluntary, it's not going to stand its ground. The Libyan conflict certainly is dragging out, because the Western powers and their weapon companies have certainly been arming Gaddaffi well, both in terms of heavy and light weaponry. So far it looks as if he has been poking his nose at the alliance, because they didn't expect his sly tactics of letting his soliders dress up as rebels, and calling in allied air strikes on the rebels themselves. The most astonishing thing yet is how many people are willing to pose as human shields to save their beloved leader from the vicious attacks from NATO. When Gaddaffi told western media that his people loves him, he was right in his own twisted way. The pictures of children carrying banners in support of him are really breathtaking. NATO sends out messages every week that they now have crippled Gaddaffi, only to realize that his arsenals are still plentiful. And as it has been reported from the US debate, the engagement is about to become illegal, according to the security council resolution. The rebels are certainly not strong enough to topple him, and no land wants to take him in for refuge. Maybe Hugo Chaves should be asked again, for the sake of world peace.

The arabic spring is still raging on, and surely Gaddaffi's brave opposition to the NATO forces has strengthened the belief with the other Middle East leaders that violent repression is indeed possible because of the divide and fraglie nature of the international alliance, and the peoples of the Middle East countries have lost their faith in the western help, after seeing that the Syrian and Yemeni demonstrators that were killed had less value as civil opposition than the civilians in Libya.

Now the peoples of Europe are also starting to take to the streets in protest. But these rebellions are much more complex and the problems to solve are much more difficult to work out. And where the Middle East protesters easily get the support of the westerners against dictators, it is harder for the people of Greece to get support for why they should have retirement age at 50, when the average in northern Europe is at least ten or 15 years higher. The Spanish protesters want jobs, but it is not like toppling a democratically elected government will do away with that problem in the short term. Yet something must be wrong if half of the younger population is living off their parents at the age of 30 or 40.

Capitalizing on critique: UN intervention as political tool

Watching live the vote in the security council was certainly a thrilling experience. There's a lot to be said here,and it was pointed out that the situation and the result was open as the council proceeded to vote; the five abstainees had different reasons for not entering into the vote - and most importantly - the two remaining veto powers also abstained. This was certainly a historic vote, and it served to reaffirm the UN security council as the world's top decision maker.
In the days to follow, the queue of people and groups wanting to critisize this grew longer and longer; and certainly when the attacks commenced. The leader of the Arab League remarked that "This was not what we voted for". It is always problematic to appear divided after a campaign has started, and it very often makes the game easy for the opponent. The question of the no-fly zone was controversial, because the US argued that such a thing would also have to include other operations than just some jets flying around in a circle above Libya. I felt that the critique of the Arab League was pretty near unreasonable, as only Qatar and maybe UAE were planning on supplying planes for the operation. The risk of being shot down would be too great if the anti-air-missile systems were not taken out, and why should only the western powers run this risk? The price tag on a jet is in the millions, not to speak of the potential loss of life. So quite frankly I'm a little provoked by all these loud critics of this resolution and the voting, because they never seem to come up with any alternatives. This leads me to suspect them of thinking about their own political standing when making critical remarks to the resolution and the intervention. How would it be possible to see eye to eye with the survivors of Gaddafi's brutalizing and hide behind the eternal excuse of internal affairs? I also think that the strong critisism regarding Libya's oil is exaggerated. Libya is not a producer of oil of a size that would totally ruin world economics.

Who owns the Middle East revolutions, and what are they about?

Colonel Gaddafi has now almost taken back Libya. Bengazhi has almost a million people, but the colonel has the means to keep them down by way of tanks and bomber aircraft.A lot can be executed too, and the rest given the choice of hailing Gaddafi or ending their lives, much like the old Roman cesarian cult. The colonel knew probably well what he was doing, because the no-fly-zone had no way of passing the security coucil in the UN. If China were to allow the priciple of foreign intervention into internal affairs, it would certainly see problems at home too. It probably did'nt help Erdogan in Turkey's application process into the EU to endorse Gaddafi, although Hillary Clinton did the same thing before Gaddafi started to shoot on his own people. As long as Gaddafi keeps on using military equipment sold to him by western industries, and soldiers trained by western special forces, he will have the upper hand versus the rebel opposition, and obviously he receives a healthy supply of young african men who will work for him for a modest salary. The freezing of his bank accounts abroad obviously has little effect as far as mercenaries go.

But that which happened in Bahrain was even more disturbing, when the Saudi-Arabian royals sent in troops to help uphold law and order. The problem here is that instead of the inspiring common values expressed by protesters to foreign newsreporters, the government and the Fahd-dynasty view this as a conflict between shiite and sunni-branches of Islam, and bring religious arguments into the discussion. This is a total deviation, and clearly demontrates how the ruling families fail to understand the scope and target for the popular protests. It might even be a very well planned strategy to take focus of the appearant lack of civil rights not least in Saudi-Arabia, but also in Bahrain.

The US. is tiptoeing as quietly as it can in these shallow waters, as the Saudi-Arabian establishment simply is too big to fail, as it were. Or too rich, and far too dominant in the oil market. No one expects the cloaked royals to pay attention to a nice motion from the US that they didn't like what they saw. The Saudis even rebuked the US, calling their step-in at Bahrain internal affairs, and not for anyone else to mingle with.

In the big shadow of Japan

I'm usually not a great fan of Ronald Reagan, but I feel that his calling Mohammar Ghaddafi 'the mad dog of the middle east' is of some value, even today. He is using the chaos in Japan to get back his country from those deranged and druged palestinian youths that tried to take it from him. And obviously he is succeeding. This should teach the impoverished and starving populations in North Africa a powerful lesson about the difference between dreams and reality. If the no-fly-zone ever comes into place, it will probably be too late, and all the journalists will have left for Tokyo.

I really hope that Ghaddafi's show of strength doesn't quell the dream of democracy totally among the peoples of North Africa, though this might well prove to be the case, as the other rulers in the Middle East also have great arsenals at their disposal. Ghaddafi has in effect shown the way on how to deal with those stupid ideas of people's rule and voting.

Much of interest in today's politics

What happened in Japan is certainly tragic, and a reminder of how fragile things are. Should there be another even stronger rupture in the seaboard the whole of Japan could literally be washed away, and for one thing this would certainly bring about earthquakes in the world economy too. More than 120 million live on those small islands, and the potential catastrophe could not even be blamed on any enviroment misuse. However, the nuclear threat is another matter all together, and very troublesome indeed. Nuclear power may well be clean, cheap and efficient, but if something goes wrong the effects would outdo the oil and gas troubles by far.Japan knows all about that, tragically.
But Japan needs the energy, and even more so if it can't get a stable supply from the middle-east.

Listening to Jan Egeland give his evaluation of the situation was interesting, and I noticed something interesting; he spoke about all the search and rescue teams around the world, waiting to be dispatched and rush into the disaster area. And he was asked about this, why wouldn't Japan just accept this with open arms. And his answer was that firstly a high level of organization needs to be in place. And secondly, Japan is one of the world's richest and best organized countries, and people there would certainly be able to muster a lot of resources on their own, and they would have to ask if they needed aid. But there is more; because the service of the search and rescue-teams is not free; it is rather expensive, and lack of coordination could even make things worse, rather than help.

I'm sure many religious groups are now predicting the end of the world as can be read in for example the book of Revelation in the Bible. It is ironic to think about aid worker's groups actually making it an industry to provide relief, and as such profiting on the "last times". I'm also sure there is a lot of healthy idealism in many of these groups, and even human compassion and empathy,but I see it as a good thing that the country's government has to ask for these services themselves, and even decide when to dismiss the rescue-groups.


The winds of change in the middle east are also very exciting to follow; the western countries' human rights hipocracy was clearly undressed, but this process is also fragile; the fall of the Saudi-Arabian ruling family is a terror scenario that the western countries don't even dare to think about.

Romfolket

Romfolket: selv ikke navnet passer inn. Ikke er de fra verdensrommet og ikke er de fra Roma. De er ikke rumenere, men visstnok egentlig fra India. Men romani vil de ikke kalles og heller ikke sigøynere. Roma er visst det offisielle navnet. Det er riktignok opptatt som internasjonalt navn, men det får ikke hjelpe. Det er vanskelig å se for seg hvordan de skal kunne få statsfinansiert velstandsvekst hvis de insisterer på å ikke være bofaste. Man kan ha amulerende skole og velferdstilbud, men for å bidra til samfunnsveksten er jo skatt et aktuelt problem. Jeg ønsker politikerne lykke til. Frankrikes løsning er i hvertfall ikke et eksempel til etterfølgelse...Det er jo ikke ønskelig at de skal jages i fra land til land og være Europas underklasse. Men det er et faktum at insisteringen på å ikke være bofaste er utfordrende, tilogmed samfunnsfilosofisk. I middelalderen gikk det vel fint an å leve av dagjobber, tigging og gatespill, men det var en tilværelse uten potensiale til sosial mobilitet, ironisk nok, når det er mobilitet dette handler om. Kanskje bruk av trådløse nettverk kan være en løsning for dem?


Vi er jo heldige i Norge som har de to norske tonemene(tonegangene): For da kan vi skille mellom rom-folket og og romfolket