Libyan radio talk turns ugly

Source: Menassat


BEIRUT, November 13, 2008 (MENASSAT) – The anonymous female caller made her appearance on Sunday night, during the daily broadcast of the program, "Masa' al-Kheir Banghazi" (Good Evening, Benghazi), on a local Benghazi radio station. Her comments would have been unremarkable in any other country, but in Lybia, they were dynamite.

"Where were the Libyan youths when people were being hanged in the eighties?" the caller said. "Who is this Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi so that we organize demonstrations in his name?”

Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi is the 36-year-old son of Lybian president and dictator Moamar al-Qadhafi.

The day after the anonymous call, Benghazi woke up to turmoil.

The manager of the radio station, Yunis al-Mojbari, promptly banned several employees, Ahmad al-Maqsabi, Ahmad Khalife, Khaled Ali, and the program's producer, Suleiman al-Qaba'ili, from entering the radio building. Al-Mojbari also called upon the Secretary of the Journalists Association and the Secretary of the Artists Association in order to work out a new programming strategy to avoid a repeat of Saturday's night debacle.

According to the Jeel website, on the same day, the Benghazi radio station was invaded by government soldiers, backed up by members of the Revolutionary Labor Movement and the Revolutionary Committees Movement, along with some revolutionary media and other government supporters.

...

A private source on the Jeel website described what happened as "a media coup" led by the Secretary of the Journalists Association in Benghazi, Yunis al-Mojbari, Massoud al-Hamidi and a leading "revolutionary" radio host.

Read more: http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/5141-hello

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It seems that Libya is on the brink of another revolution and al-Gaddafi's days are numbered. Hopefully there will not be a lot of bloodshed.

Shut down all the radio stations! Quick, before a child hears them! :sarcasm:

There is more social stability there than anywhere else in Africa probably.

Those weren't revolutions - they were coups supported by military and intelligence agencies. The KGB played an important role. Hungary and Poland had normal transitions that were entirely voluntary. Romania was the only case in which the ruling party did not abdicate, and it's now acknowledged that it was essentially a military coup.

In Libya, as long as Qaddafi is alive, there will be no shift. The country is relatively prosperous and there's little opposition in the elite and among the people.

North Africa goes, from left to right: Sane, Crazy, Sane, Totally Batshit Crazy, Saneish/Crazyish .

I currently live in Morocco and it's one of the more blessedly stable countries around and is one that I do not feel entirely comfortable slapping the "third world" label on anymore. It has its problems, to be sure, but compared to the rest of this godforsaken continent, it's Norway. Tunisia is supposed to be much the same. Maybe Tunisia is Iceland, I dunno.

Never mind that massively long wall that is related to Rio de Oro ... Morocco has serious issues.

As of yet, he has not put into place a clear line of succession. I'm not necessarily predicting a GOOD outcome, mind you, but there will be change when he dies. Sadly, I fear that the military will simply step in and seize what's left of the power they don't already own. Which is really too bad since the country is supposed to be lovely, as are the average people (which I heartily believe having lived in and traveled around Morocco and Egypt over the past year).

When the embargo is lifted within 24 hrs of Fidels posted obitary, Raul will have a hard time holding onto power after the state funeral.

Fundamentalist Muslims have been drifting into Libya from Egypt and Algeria for decades. In his efforts to gain support in the Arab world during his conflicts with the U.S. in the 1980's, Qadhafi fall back onto the "Islam vs. the West" position and tried to open relations with some of the more fundamentalist nations in the middle east. The result of this was the opening of conservative religious schools in the country, and the resulting conservative expansion actually led to Libya recognizing Sharia as legitimate law in the mid 1990's.

The problem here is a simple one. Qadhafi is a socialist who doesn't believe in theocratic government. He has allowed certain aspects of religious law to be recognized in his culture in an attempt to appease the growing fundamentalist movements, but at the same time he has refused to budge on many issues that the fundamentalists demand change on (like womens rights...Libya is one of the rare Arab nations where men and women are afforded equal rights). At the same time, Qadhafi is a pragmatist who has seen what opening trade has done to China and Russia, and he has been courting closer ties with Europe as a result. Both of these moves infuriate the fundamentalist movements.

So far, Qadhafi has choked these movement off by instituting laws that criminalize speaking against the government and permitting the families of fundamentalists to be imprisoned if a single member participates in those movements, but that isn't going to keep them down for long. Eventually, I expect that Libya will end up in a situation identical to Algeria.

Libya as it is is far better than if it fell into the hands of the theocrats. Westerners think "revolution" there would be a good thing, but it would not. I think the chances of fundamentalist victory there, however, are far less than in, say, Syria.

he will see the buzzards come back to roost some day. He can't fight what he helped "fester" forever.

like 'Hamad of Hamad's House of Humus is too conservative to advertise with us'.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/14/Sources_Libya_limiting_talk_about_unrest/UPI-29631226685668/



Obviously the Libyan regime starts to lose control over their population.