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Reuters Reports Death of Gaddafi In Libyan City of Sirte
syngularyx writes with a snippet from Reuters' report that "Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered on Thursday as fighters battling to complete an eight-month-old uprising against his rule overran his hometown Sirte, Libya's interim rulers said. His killing, which came swiftly after his capture near Sirte, is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen." An anonymous reader links to the news as reported by Al Jazeera (citing confirmation from the military spokesman of the National Transition Council). Time reports that many Libyans were celebrating even preliminary reports of Gaddafi's death.
Is this as reliable as when they captured his son and he showed up on TV soon after?
I think they've supposedly killed Kamis a couple of times. Resilient young man, that one.
Actually, it was Tito Jackson.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
arab spring seems to be a shitty operation by u.s. to topple unfriendly governments to install their own islamist supporters and to oblige the countries to financial system.
Right. Which explains why one of the first governments that was overthrown in the "Arab Spring" was Egypt... a staunch US ally that the US had poured many billions of dollars into. Congratulations. You managed to set a new record for cluelessness.
A trial would have been a farce. How can you try a dictator in the heat of battle, especially in a nation where the very same dictator had destroyed civil society?
Ghaddafi's government functioned as a true totalitarian regime, with all functional aspects deriving from the dictator himself. The Transitional Government still is in its infancy, and could not organize a legitimate court system for years.
What I regret is that Ghaddafi could not be interrogated by neutral agencies - say at The Hague. He had close relationships with the IRA, various Palestinian terrorist groups, and very interesting relationships with major oil companies. Now we cannot find out who he worked with, what bribes he paid, and what other crimes he and his government had committed.
And remember, this man ordered the destruction of an airliner, killing 270 in the air and on the ground - including a large group of college kids, researchers, purely innocent civilians. I hope the families and friends of the victims can find some peace that the murderer is dead.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
So how is this tech news?
Read it again. At no point does it state "Tech news."
"News for nerds. Stuff that matters."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
My first reaction is "good riddance." The human race is much better off without him; too bad it couldn't have happened 30 years ago, etc.. It really is a whole lot cleaner for him to be dead than to have him captured and alive, expounding his delusional nonsense to anyone within earshot, and all the messiness of putting him on trial.
On the other hand, his sudden death does mean that the Libyans, and the rest of the world, lose the opportunity to air out the closet (so to speak) and try him for his many crimes. The result would almost certainly have been the same (death), but the process would have been important for Libya: to delegitimize his legacy, to legitimize the rule of law under a new government, to exorcise old demons and grievances so as to move on, and to ferret out his many collaborators. I wouldn't say it was a complete success in Saddam's trial in Iraq. It may not come to pass for Mubarak in Egypt. The international criminal court has mad mixed success with the perpetrators in the former Yugoslavia. Still, I believe these things do matter, and there is merit in attempting it.
So true. The Muslim Brotherhood's motto is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
To them democracy and Islam can not coexist.
Uh, you do realize that actually the Muslim Brotherhood hates "western culture" and the U.S., right? They have also publicly stated that they would like to wage warfare on the west?
As such, your whole comment doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe it was a terrible troll attempt, I don't know.
Sorry you must be confused. The thread about Saddam's capture was posted back in 2003 or so. This is the one about Libya and Gaddafi.
Wait, don't tell me you actually believe a grass-roots revolution led by the poor to topple an authoritarian leadership and it's elite minority is somehow sponsoring the interests of the powerful few?
Or perhaps you subscribe to hypocritical Russian politics where attacking a foreign sovereign state is always bad. Well, unless it's Georgia.
Or are you one of those dumb conspiracy theorists who thinks this was about oil or something?
The only self interest for the respective NATO countries involved in this was prevention of mass immigration to Europe if Gaddafi continued to make things worse in his country, but mostly this was the first bout of military action in a long while that was actually meaningful, just, and most importantly - succesful.
I love the "media cover-up" mentality...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Saudi_Arabian_protests
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Bahraini_protests
(posting a wiki source because they contain shitload of references to mainstream news)
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Damn, and I was hoping for a Gaddafi reality TV show.
How cool would that have been to see him and some courtesan bad mouthing each other in front of hidden cameras and then acting all smoochy with each other afterwards.
Guess no chance of having an "I'm a dictator, get me out of here" reality show. Can you imagine Gaddafi, Saddam, Kim Jong Il and Amadinejad on a desert island together? Which one would be voted off first... ....ooops silly me, voting is for democracy.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Like OBL, he should have been tried.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In the words of the MB spokesman:
"We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people's will, removing all obstacles that restrict the functioning of civil society organizations, etc."
With the first link, the chain is forged.
The only self interest for the respective NATO countries involved in this was prevention of mass immigration to Europe if Gaddafi continued to make things worse in his country, but mostly this was the first bout of military action in a long while that was actually meaningful, just, and most importantly - succesful.
Errr, well, no. Europe and especially France & Italy are very dependent on Libyan oil. It's not like one day the Europeans woke up and discovered that there's a dictatorship in Libya and some people are revolting against it. If not all, at least most European leaders (Tony Blair, Sarkozy, Berlusconi etc) have shaked hands with Gaddafi in the past in good spirit (just google it). And Europe's relationship with Libya was in good terms until 1 year ago. So, the matters in Libya are way more complicated than they seem (or than some mass media let us see them) and one must be really naive to think that this is just about some poor people revolting against an oppressing regime.
Look, Gaddafi was a complex and strange man, and there can be no doubt that he did some things for his own people and others that other, more straightforwardly venal Arab dictators, did not do. But: an entire nation was scared to criticise him for 42 years; he killed thousands of his own people in the most vicious and terrible ways; and he punished entire cities and regions whose support he thought he did not have fully. Net net, he was a vile and terrible dictator.
They found that a bullet fired straight up isn't dangerous to people on the ground. Its just like dropping a bullet from a hot air balloon.
That said, bullets fired at, say, a 45 degree angle would be very dangerous.
Right, so dependent on it that since action in Libya European oil prices have actually largely stabilised rather than increased as would be the case if it was such an important source?
It's nothing to do with the fact European leaders waking up and realising he was a bad man, they knew this all along. It was about the fact the Libyan people and Arab/Middle Eastern people in general were ready to rise up, that was the fundamental turning point. Apparently you missed that rather major section in the news for the last 9 months+
Admittedly this is all based on reports that I would only trust to be semi-accurate so far, but it seems pretty clear that he was not executed but was a casualty of war. The last loyalist bastion in Sirte has been home to intense fighting in the past few weeks, and now it's clear why. According to the report, Gaddafi was either killed in a convoy that was hit by a NATO airstrike or by NTC fighters on the street. Unless he was shot while trying to surrender, and I seriously doubt that he would surrender given the ferocity of fighting in Sirte for a clearly lost cause, he was killed in a legitimate military action. As great as it would have been to put him on trial for his crimes, there's often no choice when someone is committed to fighting to the death.
Yeah, that's why the majority of Libyans were happy to step up and overthrow him.
Or are you going to extend your conspiracy theory into suggesting the west has succesfully manipulated the thoughts of an entire nation and they couldn't possibly have come to the conclusion they wanted rid all by themselves?
The people decided they wanted rid long before NATO stepped in, the only reason they failed to that point is because Gaddafi was bringing in foreign mercenairies and using overwhelming military force against the majority of civilians who wanted rid.
There's a good reason cities as massive as Tripoli fell against Gaddafi so quickly once the military threat vanished - because no one wanted him.
Hey, don't generalise against liberals. I'm a liberal and I agree with you minus the anti-liberal stuff.
The problem isn't liberals, it's just that some people whatever their political leaning are complete idiots. Look at Sarah Palin, it sure as hell aint because she's a liberal that she's so stupid.
Down with tyrants, that's what I always say.
Now if the CIA would stop putting them in power, we could call this progress.
Within such organizations that is usually limited to what is acceptable under their interpretation of Islam. True freedom to them is the freedom to practice their religion without being offended.
For example, do you really think they would accept "freedom of criticism" directed at Mohammed?
DNA doesn't lie, but you can't always tell what it's "saying"
And those doing DNS tests might lie, and those collecting it might collect extra DNA (it's too small to see) or tamper with it on purpose.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
but isn't "Stuff that matters" a clarifying explication of "News for nerds"? /.'s motto rather banal and lifeless.
in other words, it means to imply that "on this website, Nerd news IS what matters" rather than "on this website, Nerd news, oh and also other stuff that matter just as much"
and in every definition, "Nerd" means a one-track-mind dedicated to technology or other socially-atrophying pursuits
unless of course you redefine (and dilute) the word "Nerd" to encompass every field of interest, but then that would make "Nerd news" indistinguishable from just "news", and make
now, I'm not saying this news won't give us some very lively conversation, or that I don't appreciate it being here. on the contrary. I guess I'm being pedantic since this excuse always comes up whenever someone makes a point about the mainstream-ification, I guess you could say, of slashdot, and it always strikes me as unconvincing.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Allow me to not take the "news" as *facts*. My logic says that some powerful countries like France & Italy didn't agree with some of Gaddafi's oil policies so they helped the local population overthrow him. I'm not saying that Gaddafi wasn't a dictator and he didn't deserve to be hanged. But thanking NATO for its actions in Libya is hypocrisy at large - If the NATO countries really cared for the Libyan people then they would have killed that asshole DECADES ago. Oh and regarding the "mass immigration" to Europe, actually most of Europe's African immigrants don't come from Libya but from countries near the equator like Siera Leone, Liberia, Somalia etc (that happen to be in civil war for decades and NATO doesn't give a shit)
Do you believe every spokesman? Or you just parroting what the official line is, even though we all know they are lying through their teeth to confuse useful idiots?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Actually, liberals have pretty much been unified in their stance against supporting dictatorship regimes, who murder their citizens and fail to respect basic human rights. Unlike some, other groups. Watch The War On Democracy and then show me a single liberal who supports overthrowing democratic governments. Show me a single liberal who is against basic human rights. In every case I can think of, liberals have opposed supporting these regimes, whilst those on the right-wing have often argued otherwise (though sometimes they do admit they got it wrong)
Firearms expert Julian Hatcher studied falling bullets and found that .30 caliber rounds reach terminal velocities of 300 feet per second (90 m/s) and larger .50 caliber bullets have a terminal velocity of 500 feet per second (150 m/s).[8] A bullet traveling at only 150 feet per second (46 m/s) to 170 feet per second (52 m/s) can penetrate human skin,[9] and at 200 feet per second (60 m/s) it can penetrate the skull.[10] A bullet that does not penetrate the skull may still result in an intracranial injury.[11]
(go chase citations here)
got three different ~.30 caliber rifles here... amusingly none are a .30 carbine. but all should be able to be used to accidentally kill someone standing next to you with indirect fire.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You should have learned from the Lone Gunmen debacle not to post stories like this. Some of us are Tivo-ing the Arab Spring and don't want to see spoilers in the meantime.
The dog ate my
He had a golden gun. I reckon that alone makes the story worthy of Slashdot
They found that a bullet fired straight up isn't dangerous to people on the ground. Its just like dropping a bullet from a hot air balloon.
Yes, but only because their terminal velocity speeds were ridiculously wrong based on a flawed experiment in a wind tunnel. They tried blowing air at a bullet until it stopped falling and assumed 150 fps of wind resistance works the same on a bullet travelling 0 fps and one travelling 150 fps. In reality the bullet is extremely aerodynamically stable at 150 fps and will continue to accelerate until it reaches a terminal velocity of 3-500 fps, depending on the type of bullet. Around 200 fps is the border for penetrating the skull, so all their experiments and conclusions after that came to the wrong conclusion.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Dear AC, go fuck yourself. This gun toting meat eating liberal says we should have dealt with Gadaffi years ago.
I disagree. We never should have initiated action to take out Gadaffi. This is how you become occupiers (whether that's your intent or not, it is what happens), like we did after "dealing with" Saddam's regime.
Instead we should have waited for the Libyan people to initiate action to take out Gadaffi, and then helped them deal with Gadaffi themselves. Which is what we did. Planes in the air, advisers on the ground, and material support, but no U.S. marines patrolling Tripoli with us hoping that eventually Libyans will be able to do it themselves. Instead of us taking over Libya and then handing back to them when we feel they're ready, we helped Libyans take over Libya for themselves, and now it is theirs. This is infinitely better.
Imagine if the French had decided to "deal with" the British government in the American colonies well before the revolution. How hated would they have been? Instead, they provided significant -- I would say decisive -- support for a popular uprising, and thus became a great and loved ally of the U.S. for many years (minus a few disagreements and one quasi-war at sea), until Americans forgot that without the French we'd still be spelling color with a 'u'.
By the way, I do think we never should have supported Gadaffi and maybe this would have happened sooner.
Also, the right time to have dealt with Saddam was when the uprising occurred after Desert Storm. And we never should have supported him, either. Then we might have actually been greeted as liberators.
Going after every 'bad' guy is not the right way to exercise military power in a 'liberal' way. At least if it's the outcome that matters, not the feel-good activism aspect.
The enemies of Democracy are
But thanking NATO for its actions in Libya is hypocrisy at large - If the NATO countries really cared for the Libyan people then they would have killed that asshole DECADES ago.
No, because taking out a dictator in the absence of a local revolutionary force to combat the regime means that we have to not just take out the dictator but the rest of their military and government ourselves, so we become occupiers that hope to eventually hand the country back to its own people. You know, like in Iraq.
However supporting a popular uprising, preventing the dictator from being able to freely use their military hardware to crush the uprising, so that the people themselves can take the country back for themselves without us ever deciding whether or not they deserve it is how you show you care about the Libyan people.
Oh and obviously decades ago the U.S. didn't give two shits about the Libyan people. It was all about Israeli and Cold War politics. Controllable dictators were better than communists or free countries that might become communist was the official line. That's why we supported assholes like Gaddafi and Saddam.
Times have changed. And now, for the first time in decades, we've put ourselves on the right side of history.
The enemies of Democracy are
Once it became clear which way the wind was blowing, the US didn't have a whole lot of choice but support "Arab Spring". What was the alternative? Encourage a Syrian-style slaughter?
But the idea that somehow the whole process was fomented by the USA is just the height of idiocy. It doesn't just require a tin-foil hat, it requires hundreds of vacuum tubes, both inside & outside the brain.
A good part of it is because the West helped in the creation of the state of Israel, just 30 short years after the Palestinians won their right to statehood for their part in dismantling the Ottoman Empire. Add onto this the West's continued meddling in their governments' affairs, assassinating their democratically elected leaders and installing better puppets, and you have a pretty clear picture of what has caused the radicalization of Islamic beliefs.
If it worked the other way around, with Iran assassinating US presidents in order to install Iran friendly dictators; if Egypt annexed large swaths of the East Cost of the USA to give back to the Native Americans; if the Middle East had their unified Islamic Government the way the EU and US are unified, and then randomly put boots on the ground and military bases throughout America . . . then you might be a radicalized Christian (or whatever your faith is).
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
I do not mean occupy, I mean send in a sniper and let him spend $1 to remove the problem. No need for the big military way.
Then one of his many sons takes power, all his military and power structure is still in place, and his supporters -- and even detractors -- are rallied around opposition to Western interventionism.
Kinda like how whenever the U.S. or Israel rattle sabers at Iran, the Iranian regime becomes more powerful. Because even the many Iranians who hate the government would rather have it than have the U.S. try to 'liberate' Iran. The vast majority of them still believe in the Islamic Revolution, which was when the people overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator.
I mean it sounds nice in theory, but in reality you get to tick off the "good deed" checkbox while making the actual problem worse.
The enemies of Democracy are
The issues the rebels have faced can be put down entirely to the challenges a civilian formed rebellion faces when fighting a well trained loyal military armed with modern Western supplied weaponry (i.e. French mobile artillery).
If Gaddafi genuinely had support from a large (as in a non-negligible percentage of the population) civilian base then that civilian base backed up by the military would've easily defeated the rebels even with NATO airpower. NATO airpower however allowed guerilla warfare to win out, and if we've learn anything from Iraq and Afghanistan it doesn't matter how high tech and well equipped you are when you're forced into guerilla warfare it's ultimately the will of the people engaging in it that win out. The very fact guerilla warfare clearly won out against Gaddafi demonstrates the majority will of the people.
I'm not saying Gaddafi didn't have supporters, but more that the level of support he had was not large enough to hold sway over the majority of the population in the end. Many people were predicting the rebels would never take Tripoli because it was full of Gadaffi supporters and tribal alliances would ruin it, but it turns out that other than Sirte and a bunch of smaller towns that he didn't actually have much support after all. So much for the people of Benghazi, Tripoli and the Western tribes being unwilling to work together, it seems they've excelled at doing precisely that. Their coordinated assault on Tripoli and subsequent capture was incredible and it caught even the Gaddaffi's by suprise.
One final point is that even his military weren't completely supportive of him in the end, part of the success in Tripoli was that before the rebels arrived they had managed to get a major military leader in Tripoli to agree that if the rebels made it there, he would defect to them with his forces to avoid bloodshed. He did precisely that - even some of his supporters were only such because they feared the alternative whilst being sat in range of his secret police et al.
Can you explain why NATO intervened to "protect the civilians" when Gaddafi's forces were shelling rebel-held cities, but stand back when rebel forces similarly shell cities held by Gaddafi's supporters?
How about the fact that rebels have instituted massive pogroms against Libya's black population, accusing them all - indiscriminately! - of being supporters of the old regime (I'm sure you've heard the phrase "African mercenaries" more than once), even with respect to people who are clearly civilians? The scale of this is large enough that several international human rights organizations have already noticed and are trying to raise awareness. But I haven't heard of any NATO intervention to stop this, despite their mandate saying exactly this.
What about purges of entire towns where population remained loyal to Gaddafi?
Gaddafi was a dictator, and I won't shed any tears about him. It does not excuse direct military intervention in a foreign country to blindly support one side in a civil war - ignoring any human right violations and war crimes committed by that side for the sake of political expeidence.
But then, that's nothing new for Western countries - we've seen it all in Kosovo back in 1999.
Like I already said above in my reply to ArcherB's comment, we could have easily taken out Gaddafi when he officially visited France in 2007 and Italy in 2009 (both countries are NATO allies).
Here's a link to my other post in response to someone suggesting assassination. TLDR version: Assassination is not regime change, so you accomplish nothing positive and actually make things worse.
The enemies of Democracy are
Let me summarize for you: war is hell.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Because American politics aren't divisive enough already... You aren't helping the debate by using the worst examples to characterize a group. Should we characterize all Democrats as their worst members?
Of course not, you should characterize them by their most prominent and popular members. For the Reps, that's everyone who's still running for President. For the Dems, that's Obama and co.
It's not like I picked some unknown Republican state legistator somewhere to make all Republicans look bad, I picked one of their most popular members.
Let me summarize that for you: in war the first casualty is the truth.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.