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poo poo. Speak of the devil: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9571000/9571591.stm New audio out of the Rixos. Seems like they are being held as literal hostages. If that's the case and the rebels are unable to take this part of the city, the US or the UK may be forced to act.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:03 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 18:51 |
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They pretty much need to secure the area around it first, then convince them to give up. Hopefully they can be convinced their kids need alive more than Gaddafi needs them dead. The Guardian had this report from the Rixos as well: quote:AP's Dario Lopez-Mills filed this despatch from the hotel last night:
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:04 |
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Arkane posted:poo poo. Speak of the devil:
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:06 |
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Toplowtech posted:I guess we need full list of the hostages and their nationalities. Here we go quote:Confirmed at Rixos Hotel:
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:08 |
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quote:Thierry Meyssan, French
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:16 |
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Toplowtech posted:Now if he ends up saved by the CIA or the MI6 i won't stop laughing for a few days. I can just see him standing there as helicopters evacuate everyone else, refusing to believe there is a helicopter.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:20 |
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Brown Moses posted:Here we go Only a start...New York Times is saying there's 35 of them held hostage. That's 18 + 5 "possibles." Lizzie Phelan is one, so thats 19. Still 11 unaccounted for, assuming those 5 are there. ETA: K.A. Paul is speculated as the Indian MP that's there. Brings us to 25 with the possibles. Arkane fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Aug 24, 2011 |
# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:20 |
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I can't wait to see Lizzie's face when the rebels walk in and save the hostages from Gaddafi. Maybe she'll refuse to believe they exist.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:22 |
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Matthew Chance is tweeting from the Rixosquote:All quiet still. We will continue to update. Jenan Moussa is also tweeting from Tripoli quote:I'm in #tripoli.Saw Graffiti on walls of #tripoli:down Abu Shadshoufa, nickname of #Gaddafi; saw #french photojournalist shot in leg yestdy.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:29 |
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It's a very historically important hat. It dates back at least to 1971.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:29 |
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Arkane posted:Only a start...New York Times is saying there's 35 of them held hostage. That's 18 + 5 "possibles." Thierry Meyssan's explanation would be that some of them are CIA and MI6 agents.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:31 |
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Man, I would not be impressed if I went to all the trouble of staying in Tripoli for the entire conflict, only to end up stuck inside a building unable to report while the most important poo poo is going on right outside.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:32 |
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More Rixos newsquote:Paul Danahar BBC Middle East bureau chief is about a kilometre (two-thirds of a mile) away from the Rixos hotel. He says rebels have sealed off the road leading to the hotel, saying a firefight is taking place. Paul can hear periodic exchanges of fire, but he can't tell how close it is to the hotel.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:34 |
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Russia are a bit behind everyone else by the looks of it:quote:Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Muammar Gaddafi and Libya's rebels to stop fighting and sit down for talks. Little bit more from Jenan Moussa: quote:I saw convoy of rebels driving from #nalut 2 #tripoli 4 reinforcements.Also another convoy arriving today from #Benghazi to #Tripoli. Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Aug 24, 2011 |
# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:41 |
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Brown Moses posted:Here we go Did I hear correctly the BBC audio report mentioned a U.S. Congressman was in the hotel? Who would it be?
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 09:58 |
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Priapist posted:Did I hear correctly the BBC audio report mentioned a U.S. Congressman was in the hotel? Who would it be? It's ex-Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy, now pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., civil rights activist, and president of a organization campaigning for peace in the Middle East.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:03 |
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Priapist posted:Did I hear correctly the BBC audio report mentioned a U.S. Congressman was in the hotel? Who would it be? e:fb
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:07 |
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quote:Wyre Davies BBC Middle East correspondent is outside Col Gaddafi's compound and says while the outer walls have been breached, the inner sanctum still a dangerous place with loyalist fighters holding out in the maze of tunnels and bunkers. The men inside, he says, are professional soldiers, probably members of Gaddafi's tribe, highly trained with nothing to lose.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:14 |
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Brown Moses posted:I hope they can at least find some plans for the tunnels, it must be a labyrinth down there. One of the articles I read said they found a set of the West German contractor's blueprints for the whole site.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:20 |
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so whats stopping them from just cutting off the water and electricity? Even if they do have a few thousand squirreled away underground they will run out of batteries , fuel and water really drat quickly.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:22 |
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Probably just finding the right switch to flick, and the right valve to turn. I guess they won't try to gas them as Gaddafi family members could be down there still. Juan Cole has written a good piece on what should happen next: quote:The illegal American invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation was so epochal a catastrophe that it spawned a negative phrase in Arabic, “to Iraqize” or `arqana. Tonight I heard an Alarabiya anchor ask a spokesman for the new government in Libya whether there as a danger of the country being “Iraqized.” He was taken aback and asked her what she meant. Apparently she meant chaos, civil war, no services, etc. (Those Neoconservatives who trumpet their Iraq misadventure as a predecessor to the Arab Spring should take a lesson; no one cites Iraq among the youth movements except as an example of what must be avoided). The Libyan intervention was legal in international law, authorized by the UN Security Council, and so can hope to have a better outcome. So how can Libyans and the world avoid the Iraqization of Libya?
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:31 |
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Ghetto Prince posted:so whats stopping them from just cutting off the water and electricity? Even if they do have a few thousand squirreled away underground they will run out of batteries , fuel and water really drat quickly. I don't think you fully grasp a hostage situation.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:43 |
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Brown Moses posted:5. Avoid a rush to privatize everything. Oil countries anyway inevitably have large public sectors. Impediments to entrepreneurship should be removed, but well-run state enterprises can have their place in a modern economy, as some of the Asian nations have demonstrated. Rajiv Chandrasekaran demonstrated in his Imperial Life in the Emerald City how the US fetish for privatization destroyed state factories that could otherwise have been revived and that could have supplied jobs. This is probably good advice, but the new Libyan government will also have to deal with the fairly extreme culture of corruption in Libya's state institutions. That doesn't mean privatization, but I'm not sure the new government can simply take over the old institutions and just keep on truckin'. The same may be true of some of the police and military institutions as well.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 10:49 |
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Guy on my facebook has been posting notes and videos about how nato invaded because of the gold dinar khadaffi wanted to introduce. He's also convinced nato is killing civilians intentionally. Last week he was on about how the rebels would be locked into a stalemate for years and years. He's kinda gone off the deep end since they got to tripoli.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:00 |
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The legality of an invasion or military action isn't really a good indicator for how well "nation building" efforts will go afterwards. I mean, the justification for going into Afghanistan was much more solid than the legal foundation for the invasion of Iraq, but Iraq is improving while Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating. The main point though is that Iraq is not Libya is not Afghanistan. They have vastly different histories and cultures, and thinking that lessons from Iraq can be implemented 1:1 in Libya is like thinking that the policies which worked in Japan after WWII would work just as well in Vietnam or Iraq. On privatization, state ownership far from any guarantee that it'll be better managed. State oil companies can also be heavily involved in corruption and unethical behavior. Even Norway's Statoil (mostly state owned) has been involved in corruption in Iran, enviornmental breaches in the oil shale project in Canada, operation in occupied Western Sahara etc.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:03 |
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The BBC just posted the transcript of an interview with its correspondent Matthew Price from within the Rixos Hotel: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14644953
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:04 |
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Vir posted:On privatization, state ownership far from any guarantee that it'll be better managed. State oil companies can also be heavily involved in corruption and unethical behavior. Even Norway's Statoil (mostly state owned) has been involved in corruption in Iran, enviornmental breaches in the oil shale project in Canada, operation in occupied Western Sahara etc. True, but once you start going down the road of "examples of unethical activity" private oil companies don't exactly have a great record either, and can corrupt a government as well (see Shell Oil in Nigeria for an example).
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:08 |
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Matthew Chance of CNN has just tweeted there's now fighting outside the hotel, and the journalists are "hunkered down". Paul Danaharo of the BBC, who is outside the hotel is reporting that the rebels are trying to flank and surround the hotel, and there's lots of heavy fighting.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:19 |
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quote:The Guardian's Luke Harding has been rifling through the papers of Libya's departed prime minister. In his latest audio dispatch from Tripoli Luke says:
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:21 |
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More from Paul Danahar:quote:Have driven right thru #Tripoli & only found very small pockets of #Gaddafi forces. Rebel checkpoints every 500m. Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Aug 24, 2011 |
# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:25 |
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Footage allegedly of the capture of the Libyan state TV presenter has been released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bCSr_Pflcg
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:43 |
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Also, Jon Leyne, BBC News, makes a good point:quote:One gets the impression that there's possibly a high value target in the Rixos hotel. It's hard to understand otherwise why the Gaddafi people are defending it so strongly, unless they're just leaderless and carrying on with the orders they were given as no-one has countermanded it. Maybe Saif, or possibly even Muammar?
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:49 |
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That could be right, it just seems odd they'd defend it so heavily when they could have tried to escape.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:50 |
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Brown Moses posted:That could be right, it just seems odd they'd defend it so heavily when they could have tried to escape. If they were true believers it's possible, but presumably true believers would also be the ones who were defending any high value targets, so the effect is the same.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:55 |
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I wonder if that RT 'journalist' at the Rixos is actively undermining the efforts of the other journalists there trying to convince the gunmen it's over and to just take off.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 11:58 |
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The transcipt of the audio report from Matthew Price has been written up, which points to something interestingquote:Well, some of them have been saying that they are going to defend their country and their city. There's one man who, some here who speak Arabic have been getting along with rather well... who was talking about his three-year-old son back home and the journalists who spoke Arabic were saying to him: "You should put down your weapon and just go home, don't be a part of this. It's all over." Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Aug 24, 2011 |
# ? Aug 24, 2011 12:01 |
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Brown Moses posted:That could be right, it just seems odd they'd defend it so heavily when they could have tried to escape. Well, we know Saif was in the area at least very recently. If he was there because he's trapped and unable to find a way out, I suppose he may have holed up at the Rixos, possibly hoping to either find a way out or strike a deal using the hostages as leverage and protection from attack. But that's just speculation.
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 12:04 |
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Rob Crilly has just driven towards Sirte from Benghazi, and confirmed the fighting is at Bin Jawad, about halfway to Sirte.quote:France and other partners are working on a new UN resolution on Libya to unlock sanctions and unfreeze assets, a French diplomat told the Reuters news agency. Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Aug 24, 2011 |
# ? Aug 24, 2011 12:08 |
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The new doormat at the Libyan embassy in London:
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# ? Aug 24, 2011 12:14 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 18:51 |
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Brown Moses posted:Rob Crilly has just driven towards Sirte from Benghazi, and confirmed the fighting is at Bin Jawad, about halfway to Sirte. BM, reading through the Guardian thread, if you need a reference for CIA, I know a guy. I hear they're looking for someone to replace an asset who recently wandered off to Libya to fight. From Hague's comments. Hague: Monitoring situation at Rixos hotel very carefully #Libya #Tripoli Definite chance for it to end with a spec ops raid. farraday fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Aug 24, 2011 |
# ? Aug 24, 2011 12:16 |