McNamara Ground Ops Coffee Machine: Friday demos in Benghazi, Mosul and Cairo

Since the last post, February 15, the battles in the east of Libya began. We learn today that over 2,000 people died fighting Qaddafy's army in Benghazi(بنغازي). This afternoon, there were shootings in Tripoli against the people as the Qaddafy clique attempts to stay in power in a tiny area of Libya, in its capital, Tripoli. Popular committees in Benghazi meet and send arms to defend the people of Tripoli and bring down Qaddafi so as to establish a free Lybia. Today, there were huge prayer meetings thanking God that the people of Benghazi had liberated itself. Huge crowds celebrating.

...also demonstrations for better standard of living in Yemen, and Iraq today. As we wake up in the US, and as they go to sleep in the Mediterranean, the revolutionaries have taken over a small part of Tripoli from the Qaddafy army.

It is quite surprising that it took a whole week for the western powers to send in ships to evacuate their workers there. Only today did a Canadian plane arrive in Tripoli airport, only to turn around and go back empty because there were no Canadians waiting to get on.

Libya was a prison house of different minorities. In Libya state TV showing Qaddafi addressing Green square today, I see a banner of The Tuareg Youth, a desert tribe who speak Tamaziqa, and who were not allowed to speak it. I didn't even know the Tuareg were in Lybia. In an interview yesterday on Al-Arabiyya with a Tamazikht organizer in exile in London ...he said 50 Tamazikht officers had defected right from Qaddafy's army...or perhaps were killed It wasn't clear to me.

The Lybian ambassador in the UN, Abdurrahman Shalgham denounced Qaddafi's talk about "glory" right in the UN...he had heard the stupid rabble-rousing speech Qaddafy gave to his supporters today from a wall in Tripoli. Previously this rep had stalled, while his assistant rep denounced the regime. But today, he did, too. Curiously, even though China had to evacuate over 5,000 workers from Lybia today, in the Security Council, China is not supporting France's suggestion that the bank accounts of 25 Lybians(Qaddafi-ites) be frozen.

I wish I had recorded the Lybian ambassador's (Abdurrahman Shalgham) emotional rejection of Qaddafi's killing of the Lybian people.


1:19am Feb. 26, 2011..still the 25th at the UN in New York

Café de Flore, Paris

Je suppose que c'est de la galanterie de parler enthousiaste des femmes du mouvement 25 janvier qui ont parle courageusement a la télévision égyptienne ce soir. Pendant que le New York Times parlent de la haute bourgeoisie--Baradei et autres--qui veulent que le transition vers un gouvernement parlementaire aille lentement, ces jeunes la disaient "non..maintenant...vite, dissoudre les appareils, la police, etc., et laisser le peuple faire ce qu'il doit faire! Vraiment quel courage de dire ça au télévision. Elles sentaient intuitivement la puissance des grèves qui continue et que le général Tantawi continue a dire quand il est au télévision que tout le monde doit retourner a la production. C'est vraiment de beaux temps pour l'Egypte ces jours ci.

Une autre dame, un peu plus vieille, mais non moins forte a parler, disaient que l'argent des corrompus es en train de s'en aller ailleurs. Nous sommes témoins donc a un situation révolutionnaire ou la bourgeoisie n'a plus confiance et commence a s'enfuir avec tous ce qu'ils ont. Est-ce qu'il y a, ou est-ce qu'il va émerger, un Fidel Castro ou un parti bolchevique pour saisir les banques et commencer une distribution des plantation aux agriculteurs? Avec l'armée en charge, c'est presque comme le "bon vieux temps" du roi Farouk et les Anglais dirigeant le pays avec leur troupes.

Si je n'étais pas si vieux, je serai la en vendant le manifeste communiste en Arabe et en parlant de Malcolm X et Fidèle.

Dommage que je n'ai pas enregistre ces femmes du mouvement 25 janvier.










All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall be under the article of
Café Flore, Paris; poetry, under that of Fishawi, Jeddah or Cairo; learning under the title of the Shati Tea-and-Falafel-shop, Gaza; foreign and domestic news, you will have from
McNamara Ground Ops Lunchroom, Detroit; and what else I shall on any other subject offer, shall be dated from my own apartment.

Egypt News: McNamara Ground Ops Lunchroom, Detroit

After the occupation of Maidan Tahrir on January 25th and the resigning of Mubarak on February 11th in the face of mounting protests, including strikes in Textile and Steel, and the formation of neighborhood committees, Egypt is open to a wide debate on the future goverment for the first time. As apparently directed by the Pentagon, the Egyptian Armed Forces are letting people vent their steam, hoping to keep a bourgeois government and the private sector strong, corrupt, and wealthy, while the country suffers from poverty and impossibility to export and produce because of the Israeli blocade--the Israeli Navy, and the very existence of the state blocking normal land travel between Egypt and the rest of the Arab World and Europe.

Although the Army and Police, by saying they are now "with the people" have got cars moving through Tahrir, women in large numbers are protesting in front of various ministries and the Egyptian TV does phone interviews with what seem to be commettees of self defense in Arish, with arms, which have not yet submitted to the be coordinated by the Army "calming" forces.

General Tantawi, the Army head of Command, on Egyptian TV,calls for all strikes to cease and production to return to normal so that the country can eventually hold democratic elections. It is strange to see the Army so overtly in control. The TV is quite sophisticated in showing outspoken demonstrations and demonstrators, and at the same time, giving the biographies of the Generals and broadcasting the commanding voice of Tantawi. Doubtless the Pentagon and Obama are watching how they do this, taking notes from the Egyptians on how to do it when Americans start resisting the cut-backs, unemployment, high cost of food and poverty here. There is no mention of the outside world, just Egypt and the "wonderful" Army. That is how the US ruling class will do it too. "We're all Americans, rebuilding real democracy" under an Army Command--the command and the Army and Police that saved us from the makers of Baluch rugs in Afghanistan, who were going to "get us" with their flying carpets, I suppose--?












All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall be under the article of
Café Flore, Paris; poetry, under that of Fishawi, Jeddah or Cairo; learning under the title of the Shati Tea-and-Falafel-shop, Gaza; foreign and domestic news, you will have from
McNamara Ground Ops Lunchroom, Detroit; and what else I shall on any other subject offer, shall be dated from my own apartment.