24/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Alan Maass and Lance Selfa* –Socialist Worker
Libya’s former dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed last week as rebels, backed by NATO military forces, conquered the final city holding out against them. The U.S.-backed Transitional National Council (TNC) declared on Sunday (Oct. 23) that Libya was now “liberated”–but the manner of Qaddafi’s downfall raises questions about that claim.
Image: James (Jim) Gordon | Wikimedia Commons
Most Libyans celebrated the death of the man who ruled their country with an iron fist for more than four decades. Hatred of the Qaddafi regime spurred a popular rebellion last February. This mass mobilization against tyranny was another chapter in the Arab Spring that has spread from Northern Africa across the Middle East.
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Posted in Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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24/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Maung Zarni* – TRANSCEND
Burma is undergoing top-down changes, we are being told. Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, after his whirlwind trip to the country, told the Financial Times on Oct 11, “I almost left the country thinking they’re moving a little too fast. I never thought I would say that about Myanmar.”
Monks Protesting in Burma. Image: racoles | Wikimedia Commons
Last month, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) issued its latest report on Burma, “Myanmar: Major Reform Underway,” which brims with false hopes, unwarranted optimism, and projected possibilities for Burma—so much so that James C. Scott, Yale’s renowned Southeast Asianist, felt compelled to publicly criticize the ICG’s Burma spin in an interview with the Democratic Voice of Burma.
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24/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Now that the Libyan National Transitional Council has announced the complete liberation of the country after the killing of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, many questions have been raised about the future of this North African Arab nation and the role of its numerous tribes.
Image: William Murphy | Wikimedia Commons
Open Democracy, a member of TRANSCEND, analysed this key issue in the following article, which was published few days before Gaddafi’s death, however still relevant to better understanding the future of Libya.
Open Democracy* –TRANSCEND — The Libyan war is often portrayed through a “tribal” lens that fails to explain how the country’s tribes coexist with a sense of nationhood.
The Libyan war has not been a tribal conflict. Yet throughout the seven months of fighting, much external commentary predicted and expected that the war would acquire a tribal dimension and viewed events through the lens of “tribes” and “tribalism”.
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Posted in Africa, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 