News from Libya is incredibly scary. Some of the larger Eastern tribal affiliations, representing hundreds of thousands of people, have moved decisively against Quaddafi, and his government is responding by using the Navy and Air Force to bomb cities throughout Libya and also having foreign mercenaries indiscriminantly shoot and hack to death what look to be as of now thousands of people on the street.
Several Libyan diplomats who have resigned in protest today explicitly raised the spectre of an unfolding genocide. But I'm not seeing anything near the kind of decisive international movement justified by such credible warnings. Any student of genocide will recognize that the ethnic divisions combined with use of foreign mercenaries combined with the rhetoric and actions of the Libyan government is taking us into incredibly, incredibly dangerous territory. How many times does the human race have to go down this road?
On the good side, representatives of the Arab League are supposedly going into an emergency meeting. The United States government continues to issue vague pleas. . .
Al Jazeera Live in English is HERE. The live blog on Libya is HERE. Graham Harman's blog (HERE) remains an indispensible source of links and analysis about the Arab Spring. The President of the University of Cairo, whose own research involves some of the related issues, was actually quoted today by Al Jazeera as saying that there is a very strong danger of civil war in Libya now.
UPDATE (by JP): T 22 Feb, 9:19 am CST: Jairus Victor Grove points out the oil for guns trade between the UK and Libya.
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