Weekend Reading & Listening

By John Ballard

? Polizeros Radio. US Uncut. Violence at protests. Bloggers arrested
As I write I'm listening to last night's podcast of Polizeros Radio, a discussion group with Steve and a couple of friends convening to discuss the week's events.  Both form and content are getting better as time passes and for readers not already in the loop,  last night's discussion is a good place to start.

?Time Magazine's 140 Best Twitter Feeds
Don't know how this list was generated but it makes for an interesting scan.  I notice McCain, Newt and Palin among the politicians but the list looks balanced overall.

I cannot comment on Twitter as a social phenomenon (I still have no cell phone) but as a news aggregator it's a great source. I find that those who tweet a lot can choke out others, so I have to be selective to insure the smart sources who may not tweet often are  not lost in the flood. Retweets can be more informative than original tweets, and I am totally unimpressed with how many "followers" one has. Every week I routinely  block as many as I allow to follow me because there are so many strike me as spammers or others who for reasons I cannot imagine are simply accumulating numbers.

?NY Times The Lede Blog, Latest Updates on Libyan War and Mideast Protests
For quick updates this is a tolerably good source.  Yesterday's entry covered an item under most radar signals.

One blogger, however, has managed to keep reporting on life in Tripoli: a German woman named Julia Ramelow who moved to Libya in 2008 after living in Britain for 11 years. Ms. Ramelow explains on her blog, Haderza � subtitled �The Happenings of a Western Woman�s Small Times in Tripoli� � that she moved there with her Libyan husband.

On Wednesday, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a columnist for The Malta Independent, explained on her blog that Ms. Ramelow�s continued ability to access the Internet can apparently be explained by the fact that she is married to Musa Mansour, a Libyan filmmaker who is better known these days as Musa Ibrahim, the loyal spokesman for Colonel Qaddafi�s government who briefs foreign reporters in Tripoli each day.

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In a post about Ms. Ramelow�s diary of life during wartime in Tripoli, Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy argued on Wednesday that Mr. Ibrahim, �has emerged as this war�s Baghdad Bob, doing his best to make his boss�s statements about U.S./Al Qaeda hallucinogen mind control make sense.�

(Readers who want to compare and contrast Colonel Qaddafi�s current spokesman with the man who spoke untruth to power on behalf of Saddam Hussein in 2003 can consult this YouTube compilation of the Iraqi information minister�s greatest hits.)

?H. Res. 188 (ih) - Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the regime of Mu�ammar al-Qadhaffi.
Link to one of those non-binding "sense of the House Resolutions" creeping in the direction of delegitimizing Qaddafi, initiated by a California Republican, including the following language...

(2) the House of Representatives--
     (A)supports President Barack Obama's strategy of protecting the Libyan people in their struggle for freedom from the Qadhaffi tyranny without risking the direct intervention of United States ground forces in the Libyan civil war;
     (B) supports the freezing of the assets of Qadhaffi and his regime wherever they can be found, with the understanding that these assets will be made available to the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people once they have been duly recognized by the United States Government; and
      (C) calls for the United States in cooperation with its allies to provide the Libyan freedom fighters with the arms, supplies, and other materials needed to oust the Qadhaffi regime from power and liberate the entire country.

?The AP/Yahoo News Tally -- Top Libyan officials who have defected so far

?New York Review of Books -- The Battle for Libya by Nicolas Pelham
Nicolas Pelham has spent 20 years studying, writing and broadcasting in the Middle East and North Africa. He has lived in Damascus, Cairo, Rabat and most recently Baghdad, where he covered the US occupation as a correspondent for The Economist and Financial Times. He now works in Jerusalem as a senior analyst for the Brussels-based think-tank International Crisi Group

This four thousand word comprehensive summary is best bookmarked for later reading.
Includes this excellent map to the right.
I'm afraid the rest is not a pretty picture.

The east now has a series of self-governing city councils, collectively owing their allegiance to the National Transitional Council, which also claims authority over the remnants of the armed forces. After the capricious, opulent colonel, the lack of charisma of its new leader, the former justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, comes as a relief. But for many in the youth revolution, the slight, elderly former judge with an old-timer�s red felt hat feels too old-school. In the first days of their uprising, he was still in Qaddafi�s government; he defected on February 21, after protesting the colonel�s �excessive use of violence� against protesters. Few understand what sort of institution now claims to govern them. Aside from Abdel-Jalil, all but six of its members have refused to identify themselves for fear of reprisals, and despite their promises of transparency they meet behind closed doors. The council�s first newspaper is as partisan and sycophantic as those it replaced.

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Though it has lost its buildings, Qaddafi�s internal security apparatus remains at least partially in place. Hotel receptionists subserviently field calls from a regime informer seeking information about al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic satellite channel that is most popular with the rebels. Intruders broke into one of the very few European consulates still open in Benghazi, stole its computers, and warned the consul, who had lived for two decades in the city, to flee. In this highly centralized state in which communications are routed through Tripoli, the Qaddafis still retain control over the Internet, which they can flick off with a switch�as they did on the afternoon of March 3 (it remained off for several days)�and over both mobile phone companies. Mohammed Qaddafi, the colonel�s eldest son, owns all three. As the colonel noted in a recent speech, �It�s my country.�

Worse than the fear has been the east�s degradation. The city of Benghazi has rebelled before, most recently in 2006 when protesters chased out the security forces for over a week, and it has paid the price not just in bullets but marginalization. The second city of one of Africa�s richest countries, Benghazi is a pot-holed, battered wreck. Most of the housing predates the colonel�s rule, though the population has since quadrupled to about 700,000. The Ottoman quarter, Sidi Harabish, an architectural gem, lies sunk in a swamp of sewage. The ocher plasterwork of its walls is peeling off. In a land littered with ancient ruins, Benghazi once had a museum, but it was closed in 1980. Though the country produces some two million barrels of oil a day, the city�s marketplaces look like sub-Saharan shacks. Mari�a Kashmi, a veteran of Qaddafi�s wars in Chad and Uganda, takes home a soldier�s salary of 250 dinars a month, enough to house his four children in a single damp-infested room. �Qaddafi cares about oil, not people,� he says. �He hates us.�

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In cities across Libya, Islamist groups have proved more efficient at responding to the collapse of authority. While council members squabble over positions and policy inside the courthouse, Islamist leaders escorted by followers with walkie-talkies emerge from their tents to mobilize the large crowds with sermons and open-air prayers in the square below. Mosques formerly required to close between prayer times are now open around the clock, and Friday sermons�in which politics was banned by Qaddafi�now call for an armed jihad against him.

Salim Jaber, who heads the religious affairs office of the Benghazi council, has transferred responsibility for food distribution to Benghazi�s poor from the local markets to the mosques. Unlike in Egypt where beltagiya, or street thugs, rampaged for several days through downtown Cairo, religious injunctions against looting ensured that attacks quickly subsided. Mosques organized collections of local weapons. And sheikhs on Benghazi�s new Free Libya radio have called on their followers to fill the vacuum left by departing migrant workers.