Tag: Rebellion

Remember The 5th Of November

I believe that this date, 05 November 2024 will be remembered, at least for awhile, because of the social implications of the election.

Today is election day and most people, that I know, are planning to go out and vote and it will be an ordeal or so they say…..there probably will not be much traffic on my blog today as people make their way to the polls.

But this day has been remembered for many years.

What better time for a little history?

Because of this I shall drop a little history on you……

‘Remember, remember the fifth of November.’

On this date in 1605, a group of conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and everyone inside them. Since the State Opening was to occur on this day, it would have led to the death of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, as well as pretty much the entirety of the government.

But why, exactly, did Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators aspire to commit such a diabolical act?

Late 16th and early 17th century Europe was a veritable powder keg of religious frictions (please pardon the pun). Corruption within the Catholic Church had led to the rise of Protestant ideals even before Henry VIII upended the religious situation in England by divorcing Catherine of Aragon and declaring himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England in the 1530s.

Henry was succeeded on the throne by his son Edward (a Protestant), Mary (a Catholic) and eventually Elizabeth I (a Protestant again). Under her reign, England eventually became the leading Protestant power in Europe – but that led to rising tensions with a number of Catholic countries, most notably Spain.

The execution of Elizabeth’s cousin Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 and the failed invasion of the Spanish Armada the following year were huge events that shaped the political and religious climate at the time. Many Catholics were persecuted (around 100 priests were executed during Elizabeth’s reign) and religious intolerance was rife.

When Elizabeth I died without children, the Scottish King James VI came to London to assume the English throne as James I in 1603. Given that he was the son on Mary Queen of Scots (a devout Catholic), and that his wife Anne of Denmark was also Catholic, there were high hopes that he would take a more lenient view.

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/why-did-they-try-to-blow-up-the-houses-of-parliament

A fascinating plot and worthy of a look.

If any of my British visitors have anything to add please give me and my readers the heads up.

I am so tired of the voices of the candidates and their surrogates that my ears want to bleed….time to get on with it and let the chips fall where they may.

As you go out to vote please be careful and be safe.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

When Was The Last Successful Rebellion In The US?

We have just celebrated our Veterans Day where we give thanks for all the hard work and sacrifice that our veterans have given this country.

This past election has brought about op-eds that are predicting a possible armed rebellion within the United States….

If you try to think back in our history then the last one that comes to mind is the Revolution that gave us our independence.

If that is your answer then you are mistaken.

The Battle of Athens ( that is Tennessee not Georgia (the state) or Greece (the country not the oil for frying)….

The year is 1945 and the returning GIs as they try to put the War behind them….but one county in Tennessee would not let them do it.

In McMinn County, Tennessee, in the early 1940s, the question was not if you farmed, but where you farmed. Athens, the county seat, lay between Knoxville and Chattanooga along U.S. Highway 11, which wound its way through eastern Tennessee. This was the meeting place for farmers from all the surrounding communities. Traveling along narrow roads planted with signs urging them to “See Rock City” and “Get Right with God,” they would gather on Saturdays beneath the courthouse elms to discuss politics and crops. There were barely seven thousand people in Athens, and many of its streets were still unpaved. The two “big” cities some fifty miles away had not yet begun their inevitable expansion, and the farmers’ lives were simple and essentially unaffected by what they would have called the “modern world.” Many of them were without electricity. The land, their families, religion, politics, and the war dominated their talk and thoughts. They learned about God from the family Bible and in tiny chapels along yellow-dust roads. Their newspaper, the Daily Post-Athenian , told them something of politics and war, but since it chose to avoid intrigue or scandal, a story that smacked of both could be found only in the conversations of the folks who milled about the courthouse lawn on Saturdays.

Since the Civil War, political offices in McMinn County had gone to the Republicans, but in the 1930s Tennessee began to fall under the control of Democratic bosses. To the west, in Shelby County, E.H. Crump, the Memphis mayor who had been ousted during his term for failing to enforce Prohibition, fathered what would become the state’s most powerful political machine. Crump eventually controlled most of Tennessee along with the governor’s office and a United States senator. In eastern Tennessee local and regional machines developed, which, lacking the sophistication and power of a Crump, relied on intimidation and violence to control their constituents.

https://www.americanheritage.com/battle-athens

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Nicaragua–That Magical land

Back in the days of Ronny Reagan there was this magical land known as Nicaragua……and he presided over his domain……and the CIA worked its magic over the land…..

From time to time, the mainstream media (MSM) likes to reflect on the historical legacies of U.S. interventions in the name of American-style democracy. On May 7th, 2016, The New York Times published a story by Frances Robles on a former Contra fighter who wished for U.S. aid to fight a covert war against Daniel Ortega and the Nicaraguan government titled ‘Ortega vs. the Contras: Nicaragua Endures an ’80s Revival’ which paints a different picture in regards to what actually happened during the civil war in Nicaragua. The article is about a rebel fighter by the name of Tyson who lives in the mountains of Nicaragua who was “longing for the days when covert American funding paid for overt warfare.”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cias-dirty-war-in-nicaragua/5629008

Why would I dredge up this nugget from our sordid past?

It seems that Nicaragua is on the brink of revolt once again…..

Nearly forty years since a popular insurrection toppled Nicaragua’s right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the Central American nation has once again been engulfed by political unrest, and appears to be on the brink of momentous change.

The present convulsion began earlier this month, after President Daniel Ortega proposed a change to the country’s social-security provisions that would have forced taxpayers to pay more for the program while simultaneously cutting payouts to beneficiaries. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries of Latin America, and public reaction to this change was furious and swift, with demonstrators taking to the streets to protest. The government’s ensuing response was as ill-considered as it was cruel. Police around the country fired live ammunition to break up the protests; as many as sixty people are believed to have died in the chaos that followed, including Ángel Gahona, a young reporter who was shot in the head while conducting a Facebook Live report in the streets of the Caribbean coastal town of Bluefields.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/nicaragua-on-the-brink-once-again

The US may once again become embroiled in the internal struggles of Nicaragua……something we seem to not be capable of avoiding.

Iraq: Is US Making The Situation Worse?

I know you had rather go on about some e-mail scandal……but while you were fretting over a non-existent scandal…..the world is still a pretty messed up place…..and we are not helping.

Many people and analysts are spending all their time on the ISIS problem in the Middle East.   We are told that unless we stop them in Iraq and Syria then they will be on the Main Street of Hometown, USA ….and I will agree that ISIS could propose a major problem if they go unchecked……but could we be looking at the situation through rose colored glasses?

About here I usually drift into some historic perspective……but if my reader is unaware of the situation in Iraq and Syria by now then I prefer they move on to a gossip blog or some other topic….I have neither the time nor the inclination to rehash present day history…..with that said I shall get to the heart of the post……

After our victory against the war machine of Saddam in 2003….the US has been in the busy of suring up Kurds, for they were part of the reason for the invasion in the first place…….when the violence got intolerable to the prez and his gang of business men we began seeking help and arming some of the Sunni tribes in the dash to beat back all the extremists that were flooding into Iraq to fight the US and her allies.

After many long months and years of fighting the US pulls out of Iraq…..and then the sectarian fighting continues and intensifies to the point that the US had to back track and do something massive.  You see ISIS went from Syria into Iraq and made great headway fighting the Iraqi army that the US had trained…..and of course our reputation is at stake.

We waited and watched……and the situation presented the US with the prefect incident to return in a grand way to Iraq……a story of some Iraqi tribes trapped on a mountain gave the US its pretense for action…..and as they say………. the rest is history.

 

 

The humanitarian problem was not as immediate as we had been lead to believe…..but we came any way…..now we are arming the Yazidis in their fight against ISIS.

Then ISIS attacked Christians and the Assyrians……we condemned and rushed to arm them and train them.  The came the ancient Chaldeans…….they put together a force to fight the encroachment of ISIS into their region….we decide to arm them and train them……and recently the Iraqi Turkmens are coming under the awe of ISIS…..they are demanding arms and training………but what is going on?

Every region that ISIS enters…the locals try to ban together and fight them at every turn.  On the surface this is just locals banning together for collective protection……but once the surfaced is breached there is a situation that could turn even uglier than the ISIS problem.

We have issued the edict that ISIS is an enemy of all Muslims and that we should do all we can to ensure the protection of Iraqi sovereignty…..the problem as I see it is that the minorities that are being backed by the US and its allies will present a bigger problem when the ISIS problem has been lessened or eliminated.

Each one of these minorities, like the Kurds, see an opportunity to secure a possibility of a “homeland”….or a nation of their own within Iraq……..

The violence after ISIS will be far from over…….clashes will be an ever-present situation….all the massive amounts of arms and training will make it inevitable.  In a country awash with weapons violence will be an inevitable by-product.

In 2003 there was a proposal that Iraq become a Federation of 3 distinct states…Sunni, Shi’a and Kurd…..but now every minority is in it for a homeland…..each has a grievance against Baghdad and/or ISIS….there will be a push for multiple homelands or states if you will…….the amount of weapons will ensure a period of constant warfare in Iraq…..and only time will tell the outcome.

Surrounding countries will not be immune to this violence….there are “oppressed” minorities in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon…..just to mention those countries bordering on Iraq.  And of course the safety of Israel will ALWAYS be a driving issue.

Keep in mind that the first Gulf War was entered into because we were told that Saudi oil fields were in danger…….the fields are still there and will once again be in danger.  The US has made certain that we can NEVER leave the Middle East

The making of a new Hundred Years War.

I will be watching with the chance that I could utter the four most beautiful words in the English language……………”I TOLD YOU SO!”

What Of Ukraine?

For some reason this conflict is less important than the Oscars……people are dying, there is destruction and there is politics……the MSM is just NOT interested in this situation unless it is some horrible news that they can milk for days on end for its “news” content.  Who am I kidding?  We know why….Israel!

The cease fire seems to be holding….at least on the surface….but the back and forth between Us and EU and Russia continues but it is just not worthy of attention….but all that will change when the need arises.

I am guilty also….my interests have been laser focused on the Middle East and I have neglected this situation…….a loyal reader, I believe it was dru, brought to my attention that little is given as far as information on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine……his statement made me think that I needed to dig into the conflict and do some reporting from the “other” side……by that I mean NOT the propaganda crap that the MSM wants us to know…….Thanx my friend for the push!

My studies at university was that of the causes of war…..and the more that I look at Ukraine I see a conflict that could become a classic for future study.

Now in case you would like a little history of the country….I could go off on a lengthy diatribe but for the sake of my readers sanity….BBC has a good time line from 1917 to present…..it should answer any historical questions you may have…….

Awhile back I wrote a piece entitled…”Looking For The linchpin”……….http://lobotero.com/2013/06/13/looking-for-the-linchpin/ ……….I wrote that a future problem would brew in the Eastern Black Sea area….I was off by a couple hundred miles at most…….but where is Ukraine?

The West mostly NATO countries are poring support into Ukraine in their opposition to Russia…..the US has promised troops to help “train” the Ukrainian forces…….then why if they are that important are they not on the front page of your local newspaper?

Basically to answer the question….the American public has grown accustomed to conflicts in the news and so far they care nothing about Ukraine…..the media and the admin is pumping out as much propaganda as possible to turn the public into caring…..so far they are failing.

But now the government is pulling a page out of the Cold War playbook……the Domino Theory…….Bulgaria is in a panic and the US has sent troops for military exercises……..Lithuania is in a twist and the West is sending arms and stuff to help……Germany is trying to downplay any aggression that may come out of Russia.

All in all….it is a game being played and the weapon at this time is a non-lethal type……propaganda.

 

All’s Well That Ends Like Crap!

News that should make people realize that McCain’s opinions are as worthless as tits on a boar!

How many times have you or your family heard that great American “patriot”, John McCain,  scream about the failure of the Obama administration for not coming to the aid of the rebels in their fight against Assad and now ISIS?  How many times?

From the beginning McCain has been yelling and ranting about the need to arm and supply the rebels….of course this coming from a senator that has been wrong on foreign policy for at least 20 years……….and he screamed about Libya, Georgia (the country not the state), Syria, etc….one rebellion after another…..he spent more time in front of the cameras than some news anchors….but what about his calls for arming rebels…….

When President Obama was trying to decide whether to arm rebels fighting the Syrian government, he asked the CIA to examine its long track record on such things. The review’s conclusion? It’s usually a waste of time and money—and sometimes only makes matters worse, reports the New York Times. The review looked back over the agency’s 67-year history and found that time and time again—from the Bay of Pigs, to the Sandinistas, to Somali warlords—providing arms to insurgent forces rarely had any significant effect on how things turned out.

That proved especially true if the US provided arms without having American personnel on the ground to provide guidance, as is the case with Syria. One notable exception: The CIA provided arms and training to Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and the rebels eventually drove the Soviets out. However, intelligence officers from Pakistan were on the ground helping the Afghan fighters. President Obama decided last month to provide limited assistance to Syrian rebels fighting ISIS, prompting a blogger at Firedog Lake to wonder, “What’s the point of commissioning a study just to ignore it?”

Once again McCain has proved that he is nothing but a political hack and still knows NOTHING about foreign policy.

Maybe now would be a good time to stop listening to McCain and giving him a platform to spout his ignorant rants……he proves time and time again to be a front man for the Military-Industrial Complex and not a good US senator……..

Whatcha think?

Your Ignorance Is Showing

Inkwell Institute

Americans have all the information they need to make an opinion about Syria and what is to be done…..they know that a bunch of rebels are fighting Assad’s troops for control of the country…..they know that there may be al-Qaeda fighting in the countryside……and they know that there are chemical weapons and that they have been used….and now that you have all the facts I can move on……..

The ugly truth is that the average American knows nothing about Syria…….they know what the media wants them to know and nothing more……

To begin with I will explain why I say these things…..first, in my younger days I lived and worked in the Middle East….Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon Syria and the Occupied Territory….I had a job as a researcher for a Spanish newspaper……plus I did my grad work in Middle East Studies among other things…….and even today I read regional newspapers and sites to get a more clear picture of the situations that we are told little of by our crackerjack media……

Now for the grits and the gravy!

First, the most recent accusations…..use of chemical weapons…..

Meanwhile, not all U.S. officials agree with the worrisome intelligence assessments recently relayed by the three officials. “Any effort to secure Syria’s chemical-weapons would be complex, but we have good visibility on Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpiles and are constantly monitoring for any sign of movement,” a White House official told The Daily Beast late Wednesday. “We believe that the stockpiles are secure.” (A spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment for this story Wednesday.

But other U.S. officials said one of the problems in tracking the chemical stocks in Syria once they were loaded onto trucks was finding out where those trucks were headed. One official said U.S. spy satellites in November picked up clear photographic evidence of trucks being loaded at known chemical-weapons storage sites outside Damascus. But this official also said the satellite did not track the movement of the trucks in the country. “You have to remember that satellites are not unmanned aerial vehicles,” this official said. “We saw the trucks being loaded, but we did not see where they went.”

Basically, what that quote is saying is that they have NO idea where the stores are with any certainty……and as reported earlier….the US is not sure they were used or who used them or even where…….it is a political game being played to warrant an armed response….but by whom?

Offering arms to the opposition, the rebels……but who are the rebels?  And what good would arming these fighters do for the future of Syria?

We have heard all the lip service that McCain and his cronies have given to the necessity of arming the rebels…..and the Obama boyz are listening……

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a Pentagon press conference Thursday that the US is “rethinking” policy on directly arming the so-called rebels in Syria.

Appearing with British Defense Minister Philip Hammond, Hagel became the first Obama administration official to acknowledge that Washington is considering a qualitative escalation of its proxy war in Syria.

“Arming the rebels; that’s an option,” Hagel said. Asked directly whether the administration was considering such a step, he replied: “Yes.”

Hammond echoed Hagel’s position, stating that Britain has “not thus far provided any arms to the rebels, but we have never said it’s something we will not do.” He added that London was concerned with “legality,” and was presently subject to a European Union ban on supplying arms to any side in Syria.

There’s no surprise that providing arms to the weaker side in the conflict was always going to prolong it. This is what opponents of the idea have been saying for years. Prolonging the conflict until the opposition could prevail has been the goal of interventionist proposals from the start, since their object has always been escalation and eventual regime change rather than mitigating and limiting the effects of the conflict. What advocates for arming the Syrian opposition never explain is how prolonging the conflict would not create even more instability and displace even more people, and they don’t do this because they cannot. Arming the opposition has always been just the first step in dragging the U.S. into the conflict, since it was never very likely to be sufficient on its own to topple the regime. Direct intervention would be the next step that hawks would demand when arming the rebels isn’t “working” quickly enough. In the the event that an air campaign also fails to “work,” there would inevitably be calls for an invasion in order to preserve our “credibility.” If the administration doesn’t want to take these later steps, it should refuse to take the first one.

Ask the question again…..the most important question….which rebel group gets our support?

Now the problem is if the US and its allies send all the weapons and such to the rebels what could be the eventual outcome?  A free Syria?  Before that is answered something else to consider…..

Rebel groups battling a common enemy – the regime of President Bashar al-Assad – are frequently confronting each other, with ideological rifts emerging in the highly fragmented opposition as Syria’s civil war grinds on in its third year.

Growing incidents like these of intra-rebel skirmishes – some of them fatal – highlight an intense contest for power in rebel-controlled areas, with many like Ahmed bracing for what they fear will be another war in post-Assad Syria.

Last month, Abdullah, another Liwa al-Tawhid rebel, was killed while driving to the brigade headquarters. He was shot in the neck. His brother Diaa accuses FSA’s Sawt al-Haq Brigade of having orchestrated the killing over a petty personal dispute.

Clashes erupted last month between the moderate-leaning Faruq Brigade and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front in Tal Abiyad, on the border with Turkey, in a sign of festering tensions over ideology, with up to four people reportedly killed.

It was one of the bloodiest skirmishes highlighting the ideological divide.

“The al-Nusra group and its allies have an agenda that other opposition groups don’t share – creating an Islamic emirate and fighting the global jihad, which makes conflict all but inevitable,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Personally, I do not believe that there is any good way for the US to intervene in Syria…..why?  Because there is NO good options open to the US and it would not change a thing…….doubts?

(Newser) – To hear White House critics like John McCain tell it, the US can’t intervene in Syria fast enough. The atrocities, he says, “are on a scale that we have not seen in a long, long time.” Has he forgotten about Iraq so quickly? wonders Fareed Zakaria at Time. Even worse atrocities occurred there during the US occupation. Recall that in Iraq, a minority regime held power. The same holds true in Syria: It’s mostly Sunni, but Bashar al-Assad is a member of the Shiite subsect Alawites. It’s foolish to underestimate how much this complicates things—you can see it in Lebanon’s modern history, too.

A minority group in power will cling to it desperately, fearful of what will happen if the majority takes control. US intervention will “intensify” the war and make Assad even more desperate, writes Zakaria. “If the objective is actually to reduce the atrocities and minimize potential instability, the key will be a political settlement that gives each side an assurance that it has a place in the new Syria,” he writes. That never happened in Iraq, and the result is today’s chaos. A political pact is Syria’s only hope. Otherwise, “US assistance to the rebels or even direct military intervention won’t change much.” We’ll be in the middle of another long civil war. Click for his full column.

We can pretend that we know the “rest of the story” but we have NO clue…….the government and media are working in concert with each other to keep as little info available through the cable news outlets….this is in an attempt to control the flow of info as needed…..Americans will NOT get all the information they need to decide whether intervention is necessary until it is too late……

Does that sound at all familiar?

Addendum:  Over the weekend Israel has taken it upon themselves to launch an airstrike within Syria…..now how could this effect the US and the debate that is going on?

Mali And The Taureg

Inkwell Institute

Subject:  Western Africa

This week I will focus on reports from around the world that have not made much time in our dynamite media……in these days of political games with candidates sniping at each other, spin doctors throwing lies out there for the digestion of the voter, the world keeps turning and situations keep popping up and the media has better things to do like some idiotic working Mom story or a dog tale from days past…….I thought I would just let my readers in on a few things that could change the world if not handled properly…….

There is a war going on in the Western African nation of Mali….Mali?  Who cares?  An answer that was given lately.

I know….what the Hell is Mali?  Good question and here is a short synopsis on the country……..

The Sudanese Republic and Senegal became independent of France in 1960 as the Mali Federation.  When Senegal withdrew after only a few months, what formerly made up the Sudanese Republic was renamed Mali.  Rule by dictatorship was brought to a close in 1991 by a military coup that ushered in a period of democratic rule.  President Alpha KONARE won Mali’s first two democratic presidential elections in 1992 and 1997.  In keeping with Mali’s two-term constitutional limit, he stepped down in 2002 and was succeeded by Amadou TOURE, who was elected to a second term in 2007 elections that were widely judged to be free and fair.  A military coup overthrew the government in March 2012, claiming that the government had not adequately supported the Malian army’s fight against an advancing Tuareg-led rebellion in the north.  Heavy international pressure has forced coup leaders to accelerate the transition back to democratic rule and, to that end, Dioncounda TRAORE was installed as interim president on 12 April.

Now what is a Taureq?

The Tuareg people are a Berber people of the deserts who usually maintain a traditionally nomadic lifestyle.  Tuareg Berbers are the principal and indigenous inhabitants of the Saharan interior of North Africa.  From the early days of colonialism the Tuareg have been fighters for their freedom….a way of life that continues today.

I have defined Mali and the Tuareg and now you, my reader,  want to know where I am going with this…..AQIM!  I know huh?  It stands for Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb.

AQIM stems from a group started in the late 1990s by hardline Algerian Islamists, who, in 2007, formally subscribed to al-Qaeda’s ideology. These fighters, numbering around 300, have spun a tight network across tribal and business lines that stretch across the Sahel, supporting poor communities and protecting traffickers.

They are comfortable operating in the harsh desert terrain and have made millions from ransoms of European hostages.

AQIM chiefs Belmokhtar, Abou Zeid and Yahya Abou Al-Hammam met with Malian Islamist leaders and are said to be staying at the Timbuktu military camp, now under rebel control.

We have all heard about AQ in Pakistan or Yemen…..but AQIM needs to be monitored heavily….if they get their way they will control a sizable tract of land in the North of Mali and could become the new training area as Afghanistan did once Sudan threw them out.  AQ could make a huge comeback if left unchecked.

Brothers With Arms

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Middle East

No, Irene…all is NOT well in the Middle East!  And NO….it has not gone away!

There is a discussion or even a debate going on about the possibility of arming the Libyan rebels in their fight against the Qaddafi regime and all its military might……some are remembering our other “arming” of rebels fighting a militarily superior force……..We’ve been down this “old, dark path” before, and it rarely ends well, says Max Fisher in The Atlantic. From Afghanistan to Nicaragua, U.S.-armed insurgencies usually “create instability and violence” that add to a country’s problems. Britain and France may send weapons to Libya even without the U.S., but America, at least, shouldn’t add another chapter to our “sordid history” of arming insurgents.

No, we can’t risk arming jihadists: With the rebels apparently in a “disorganized, panicked retreat” once again, it’s tempting to want to do something, says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. But giving them weapons “poses at least two problems”: Key coalition allies would defect, and we’d be arming a rebel force that contains “flickers” of potential al Qaeda and Hezbollah fighters, according to NATO. It “seems rather inadvisable” to arm our enemies.

I am old enough to remember the disaster of arming the Contras and rebels in El Salvador…..there were many massacres done with American weapons and with American training….it was NOT a pretty policy and we should NOT allow this again….look at Afghanistan…..we armed and trained the rebels during the Russian invasion of the country…..and that turned out fairly crappy….AQ received a lot of assistance from the US and we had to pay for it later…..I do NOT want to relive that horrendous act!  How about you?

We definitely do NOT need another Iran-Contra Affair…..But then when has the US ever butted out of another country’s internal situations?

What If There Is A Stalemate?

Inkwell Institute

Middle East desk

We all have an opinion on the situation that has developed in Libya…..I have made my views known (go to search and type in Libya…if interested) and I have even asked a few questions that I would like to see answered….many readers have offered up their opinions and insights and we will just have to wait an see who may be right…..after writing my last post…I had another question that nudged into my bleeding brain……with all the fighting in the North of Libya….what if there is a stalemate….what then?

And a stalemate is in the making….loyal Qaddafi forces are using regular vehicles in attacks so that aircraft cannot discern who is who….a clever bit of strategy……

First of all I need to say a word or …well maybe a bunch….about what I see is going on in Europe (I would like for my friends, especially Quin to help me out since I am not there) with this military action…..

In the UK……will this action strengthen Cameron’s position?  From what I see he is having a time with the public….could he gain from the participation of the UK in this conflict with Qadafi and his forces?  Is there public support for the action?

France……Sarkozy has been a bitch when dealing with this thing…..his popularity is waning…nationalists and socialists have made in roads into local governments giving them an upper hand when the next election comes around….so Sarkozy is hoping that this action will improve his political capital….he wants to be in the lead for that will make him a DeGaulle-esque figure….if all goes well……

There was a recent meeting in London of the major players……….

As the Guardian noted, Cameron and Clinton were careful in their remarks at the conference to refrain from directly repeating their demand that Gaddafi step down, because among the governments represented at the conference there are differences over openly making regime-change an aim of the war.

“Cameron did not repeat his demand for Gaddafi to stand down immediately and to face justice at the International Criminal Court,” the Guardian noted. “The conference is attended by Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, who is hoping to broker a ceasefire between Gaddafi and the rebel forces. Franco Frattini, the foreign minister of Libya’s former imperial ruler, Italy, who has raised the prospect of spiriting Gaddafi to exile, is also attending.”

The bit about “Qadafi Must Go” is waning….as if they are setting up a scenario for him to stay…let surmise that that occurs…..what then….will Libya be partitioned?  I am sorry….but Libya’s natural resources that are in abundance makes me think there is something afoot here………OK…that may be a bit of a conspiracy theory….but happenings from the past does not rule it out!