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Cracks Showing in the Libyan Firewall?
An anonymous reader writes "Most Libya Internet traffic has been blocked since the start of the uprisings on February 17. In what may be the first cracks in the Libya Internet firewall and a sign of the rapidly evolving political situation, Libya Internet traffic climbed over the weekend according to Arbor. Twitter updates also suggest the Internet is now working in eastern cities like Benghazi. Gaddafi may be losing control of his state telecom (Libya Telecom and Technology)?"
Sooner or later, governments will finally acknowledge that you simply cannot stop the dispersal of information. Even in countries such as China where there is heavy regulation of media, people still manage to find ways to communicate their ideas -- just not on a large scale as elsewhere in the world. What we are seeing is that the internet may be the key to a future in which governments will no longer be able to censor speech. To disconnect from the internet would be to engage in electronic economic suicide (I am sure that Egypt's e-commerce was considerably hurt by the outage), and to remain connected would mean that sooner or later, the gates to the control center of censorship will crumble from all the tiny cracks created from within.
... you really can't get a good feel for Gaddafi's rants in 140 character chunks.
Have gnu, will travel.
There are two Libyas now.
The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya - That's Gaddafi's Libya, its the government that use to run all of the geographical area we think of as Libya.
The National Libyan Council - is revolutionary Libya based on Benghazi, it's been under rebel control for over a week now.
"I want that firewall fire-bombed! Bomb that Internet and twitter back into the stone age, son! I love the smell of napalm in the morning . . . "
Although this sounds outrageous, this is probably what a bunch of them have their general staff working on . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The US government only cares about the right of the people to express dissent against foreign leaders they disapprove of. In fact, no more than a month after Hillary Clinton gave that speech, she gave another address condemning foreign governments for silencing dissent. During that speech, Army veteran and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern turned his back. For that silent, peaceful, non-disruptive act he was dragged from the room and assaulted.
This is the definition of hypocrisy. Hillary Clinton witnessed the scene happening directly in front of her and never said a word. These are the kind of people we have leading America today.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
On the contrary, he has all the hallmarks of a coward and probably doesn't have the guts to shoot himself. I predict a Saddam Hussein style ending for him.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's why the US government is so supportive of Wikileaks.org, right?
You specifically don't use F22's in a place like Libya. Less cutting edge stuff will easily do the job, as well as the fact that the only place you need to enforce no-fly zones is near the coast, making longer range naval surface to air a possiblity for large percentages of populated areas.
Even with your latest, greatest, there is always the chance that some guy with an AA gun will get lucky, or that you'll have a mechanical failure and crash. Then you have a big, big problem, as all of a sudden Russian and Chinese agents show up with giant duffle bags full of cash, offering farmers $$$ for anything that looks vaguely like busted up aircraft parts.
There's a lot of speculation that the latest Chinese stealth fighter was developed so quickly because they got hits from the parts of the F-117 that went down during the Kosovo operations.
And F-22s are only forward deployed to the Pacific and Korea.
That risk of loss from operation tempo and the magic bullet are also reasons why the EU/NATO won't send Eurofighter Typhoon down there. Harriers, Rafales, F-16s and F-18s can deal with anyone in North Africa and have more loiter time than F-22 or Typhoon.
You know she just married you for your low uid.
The guy worked as an intelligence analyst under 7 different administrations (27 years) and was the guy who prepared/gave the daily intel briefing to the president for a lot of those years.
That gives him at least a *little* base credibility. He's not some "Don't taze me bro" protester.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I almost automatically read it as "a principled person who I disagree with."
He's a 911 "truther". He may have been a good CIA analyst, but he's either playing up the nutjobs for money or he is one himself.
At the very least, you should be skeptical when literally the only account you can find of an event in a room full of people comes from one man. I won't come right out and call him a liar, but nor will I condemn Clinton without hearing more... and believe me, I'm no fan of Clinton.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
1. Libya has 1970s SAMs and 1960s AAA, the places where those nodes are still in Gaddafi's hands are airbases around Tripoli. The Prowlers and Super Hornets on a US carrier as well as the Rafales on Charles de Gaulle can identify those, jam and kill those with HARM and SCALP missiles with very very little collateral damage.
That is if the Libyan military even turned those on. If the Libyan military is down to flying in guys from the Congo and Sierra Leone as heavies, the danger of an integrated air defense network is very low.
2. Carriers beat NATO airbases because they are able to get much, much closer while carriers and amphibious assault ships make for very good and efficient staging areas for humanitarian assistance. Carriers and Amphibs can deploy food, medical teams and evacuate people with helicopters, planes out of Sicily can't.
Naval Air Station Sigonella to Benghazi is 450 air miles. Crete to Benghazi is 310. Malta to Benghazi is 410 air miles. The eastern Gulf of Sidra is 50-75 miles from Benghazi.
Cairo West Airfield to Benghazi is 650 air miles, if the Arab League and Egypt decided to allow that to be used.
If the humanitarian problems go to western or southern Libya, naval aviation remains the most flexible option.
Bringing Gaddafi in from the cold was a good deal in 2003-2004. The guy did give up his WMD program to the US/UK and opened up for inspections.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/2011227162155530547.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapon_proliferation#Libya
If the US and UK hadn't bridged the gap, then he'd had mustard gas to drop on the Free Libya movement and social networking technologies like Twitter, Skype would be banned from distribution to Libya.
As it is now, there is mustard gas a few hundred km south of Tripoli (where the US/UK can see it from satellite) at a military base but no bomb canisters for deploying it.