I am not so sure Gadaffy is going down. In a war against guns, unarmed people lose. Lots of blood will soak the streets. But he will defend his right to the oil money if he has to kill every citizen that does not work in the oil fields.
What kind of people would be willing to shoot unarmed civilians for money? I shudder to think of it. But if he can buy enough people to do his dirty work, he can prevail. Libya will be an even worse place after it ends.
The middle east will suffer from a lack of tourists for a long time. That is a big deal to their economies.
He’s going down. The question is how much blood will soak the streets in the process.
It’s easy to miss this in the press reports, but the opposition has guns. Quite a lot of them, at this point. They started out as peaceful protestors, but now, with the army defections and their own government trying to exterminate them, the “protestors” have become armed rebels. The military success of the protestors accounts for all of Libya having fallen to them, except for Tripoli.
Looks like the RAF and UK Special Forces have been busy.
Interestingly, that article explicitly mentioned the SAS and SBS when it first appeared about half an hour ago.
Trained pros will dominate the civilians. The battle of Tripoli will be the final battle . If the military fights with him the people are doomed and a bloodbath will follow.. If he can hire enough mercenaries and the army stands by, he can win that way too,.
Not what happened in Benghazi. There were elite troops in the base and they got their asses handed to them.
What? There’s them as would pay you for the chance.
C-PAC 2012, Libya? I’m seeing some synergy here!
Check out this demonstrator’s sign from Tripoli.
Oooh. The colors are the old/rebel Libyan flag. And note the skulls around his waist.
Finally. Now, recognize the provisional government!
As for a no-fly zone – is Gaddafi actually using air power at the moment?
I don’t believe he’s staying in power for money (contrarily to the utterly corrupt Ben Ali). IMO, he’s after power, and believes in his delusions and in his destiny (leading a pan-Arab, then a pan-African union)
Leaders get way too much love from carefully picked crowd sand meetings where their fans are in attendance. After a while they think everybody loves them. That is why Palin is amazed to see some people don’t love her.
Or just look at Micheal Jackson; he wasn’t even a political leader, much less a dictator with absolute power. But simply being wealthy and surrounded by fans and toadies for so many years was enough to send him quite a ways around the bend. That kind of uncritical adulation and isolation from the real world isn’t good at all for people.
Which does not mean it isn’t worth having, of course. It’s good to be the king! 
Until it isn’t, and you find you’ve missed the clues.
Until the revolting * peasants rise up!
- They still stink on ice.
On a related note, it was surprising to me to find that among the factors why the French revolution took place were the crop failures on 1788–89 that caused the rise of the price of bread. For many in France, it meant paying from one third to half of their salary or pay in food alone.
We should not forget that a factor also for the current unrest in northern Africa and the ME are the shortages and the rise in food prices caused by the recent crop failures in Russia and other places.
[QUOTE=GIGObuster]
We should not forget that a factor also for the current unrest in northern Africa and the ME are the shortages and the rise in food prices caused by the recent crop failures in Russia and other places.
[/QUOTE]
And what we have seen is only the tip of the iceberg. Or rather the continent.
This is going to a very long “year of rage”.
The United Nations Security Council on Saturday unanimously approved a draft resolution to impose sanctions against Libya
By the Democracy Index, most African regimes are authoritarian. If that could be changed . . .