August 26, 2011

The Inevitable

From the Washington Post in "Libyan Rebels Carry Out Reprisal Attacks:"
A few minutes’ drive from the fire station, at least 15 bodies, most of them Gaddafi’s black African supporters, lay rotting in the sun at a traffic junction outside his Bab al-Aziziyah complex. Several of the dead wore green pieces of cloth wrapped around their wrists to signal loyalty to the Gaddafi regime. 
 The men may have died during Tuesday’s battle for Bab al-Aziziyah, and several were wearing military fatigues. But not all of them looked like ordinary battlefield deaths. Two dead men lay face down on the grass, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic cuffs. 
The worst treatment of Gaddafi loyalists appeared to be reserved for anyone with black skin, whether they hailed from southern Libya or from other African countries. Darker-skinned prisoners were not getting the same level of medical care in a hospital in rebel-held Zawiyah as lighter-skinned Arab Libyans, Eltahawy said. 
Rebels say Gaddafi employed gunmen from sub-Saharan Africa to shore up his army against his own people, and those fighters have elicited intense enmity from Libyans. But many of the detainees in Zawiyah told Amnesty International they were merely migrant workers  “taken at gunpoint from their homes, workplaces and the street on account of their skin color,” Eltahawy said.

I wrote about this anti-black aspect of the Libyan uprising back on February 27. Qathaafee's pro-immigration and pan-African policies were especially unpopular with his subjects, and hence the rebels have long been taking out their ire especially on the Colonel's foreign black mercenaries. Similarly, the Bahrain uprising by the Shi'ite majority had a lot to do with the Sunni regime's policy of electing a new people by importing Sunni immigrants, typically security service types from other countries. But Bahrain is closely allied with the U.S., so they didn't get any cruise missiles shot at the government while they put down their people.

71 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the rebels!!!!!! True patriots!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Of course, if Obama, Nato, and liberals hadn't supported this war, MSM would call it 'racist attacks'. But they can't condemn it too much since it's a liberal interventionist war.

Anonymous said...

Just think of the uproar if the Afrikaners had committed these "African on African" acts. But the international community cuts a log of slack for Arabs.

Anonymous said...

being totally amoral: is it more successful to import another race to dispatch one's people if they have higher IQ?

A. Akbar said...

Qathaafee

That's just puerile.

Anonymous said...

Qathaafee

It's almost like there is one-upmanship in finding the most exotic spelling for Gadafi. Steve may have found a winner.

Anonymous said...

Gaddafy was just trying to make Libya get more in touch with its black African roots. Heck, we are all African! He was also apparently fond of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He had a photo album devoted just to her. He also gushed about what a strong black woman she is.

Anonymous said...

despite media propaganda, the rebels still do not have control over Tripoli.

Anonymous said...

What Obama did to Gaddafi should tell us something about him and his cronies. Whatever he says, DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!!!!
Gaddafi, living like Michael Jackson all these yrs in his little fantasy world, clearly lost all sense of reality when he trusted the West.

Whiskey said...

It sure would be funny if Khadaffi popped up in say, Chad, with a whole truckload of gold.

Memo to dictators everywhere. People can easily seize international and even national bank accounts. But Gold guarded by your own die hard supporters? That's a lot tougher. Lesson: Dictators keep gold (handy for buying your way in to places like Saudi Arabia or probably Chad for Khadaffi).

Anonymous said...

despite media propaganda, the rebels still do not have control over Tripoli.

The rebels kept losing but they kept losing battles nearer and nearer to the capital - and now in the capital!

Antioco Dascalon said...

Qathaafee. I love it. But it's even better to never use the same transliteration twice. It's a perfect parody of the SWPL one-upsmanship of cringing in horror when people say Peking or Bombay rather than Beijing or Mumbai. Of course, it is the difficulty of transliterating from Arabic that prevents the name Mohammed from being the number 4 male birth name in England after Oliver, Jack and Harry. Mohammed is #17, Muhammed is 31 and Mohammad is 67.

Anonymous said...

Gaddafi tried hard to identify Libya with the African continent (in a bid for leverage and leadership), rather than the Arab world (which is, as we know, riven by splits, divisions, duplicity, snobbery and a Palestinian fixation, plus the horrible Saudis run te show).
Gaddafi was probably genuinely free of race prejudice, but I do not know whether this is true of the the 'real' Libyan people who are dark caucasians and not sub-Saharans.

Anonymous said...

I must confess that I feel deposing Gaddafi was probably a foreign policy mistake by the west - inspired by the political vanity of a few trashy unintelligent European politicians - with no real strategic analysis.
The point is that pre revolution Gaddafi learned to be a good little boy, put his wild days behind him and actually was quite a useful western ally.
Who knows what will come after him.

Anonymous said...

Ugh, how dishonest of you.

Bantam said...

Steve, can't wait for your explanations.

Bantam said...

OT

Do you think submerging the British with more Caribbeans and Pakistanis will do the trick?

Anonymous said...

Re: Lybia A picture is worth . . .

dearieme said...

KKKhaddaphee. Though the implication seems to be arsy-versy.

Londoner said...

Excellent, the outrageous transliterations are back! Surely at least one apostrophe is required though? Qu'hadhafiy perhaps.

Anonymous said...

The rebels kept losing but they kept losing battles nearer and nearer to the capital - and now in the capital!


If Gaddafi send his army out to attack rebels, his army will just get bombed by NATO, so luring rebels into city for urban guerrilla warfare is his only choice, his troops will be blend in with the civilians, so NATO can't bomb them.

alexis said...

Love these ghetto-fabulous spins on his name.

When stuff like this happens, it's a great opportunity to catch up on obscure events that happened decades ago. For example, some Qu'ad-taffey article last month referenced the Toyota War of the 80s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

Missed that the first time around.
****
You gotta admit that his chick bodyguards are cool.

Chicago said...

We sure have a wonderful collection of allies around the world. I suppose the rebels, the new recognized government, will now invite us in to help them run things.
At the time Khaddafi was being publicly hailed as a newly responsible member of the world community, a man we can do business with, we were probably already plotting to overthrow him.

Anonymous said...

Black guys or just rigor mortis? All people turn black after they die....

Anonymous said...

Thanks Mandela!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/lockerbie-bomber-vanishes-as-net-tightens-in-tripoli/story-e6frg6so-1226123164764

headache said...

This is also one of the reasons why the AU under Zuma have not acknowledged the NTC. They know the score, and they don't like it.

headache said...

Whiskey said...
Lesson: Dictators keep gold (handy for buying your way in to places like Saudi Arabia or probably Chad for Khadaffi).

Saudi appareantly don't want him coz he tried to assassinate their king a few decades back.

headache said...

The point is that pre revolution Gaddafi learned to be a good little boy, put his wild days behind him and actually was quite a useful western ally.
Who knows what will come after him.


not so much. gadfly was using mass immigration to europe by africans crossing his territory as a tool to blackmail the EU for increasing amounts of dollars. lately he was basically ignoring all the immigration control agreements he signed with the EU. i think this is a major reason they trounced on him: he was not keeping his side of the deal.

Anonymous said...

The irony here, of course, is that the specific reason, at least apparently, that the Libyan war was urged upon Obama was that it was important to forestall a "genocide" that would ensue as Kadaffi's reprisal against popular rebellion.

And who is, in fact, engaging in genuine genocide? Why the rebels, of course.

As usual, heckuva job, Obama.

Glaivester said...

Moore Maw Gay Taffy.

Moomaw Kay Daffy.

Mohama Gut Airfy.

SFG said...

"Qathaafee's pro-immigration and pan-African policies were especially unpopular with his subjects, and hence the rebels have long been taking out their ire especially on the Colonel's foreign black mercenaries."

Yeah, but you make it sound like they're trying to sneak over the border to work and make anchor babies. He was using foreigners to oppress his own people, of course they're going to hate their guts!

Anonymous said...

Gaddafi's Secret Photo Album Of Condeleeza Rice Found By Rebels

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/25/7470058-in-the-ruins-of-gadhafis-lair-rebels-find-album-filled-with-photos-of-his-darling-condoleezza-rice

Anonymous said...

"Well, contrary to liberal/leftist fantasies, Arabs initiated the first true large scale African slave trade, centuries before Europeans got into the game."

Many were black Arabs.

At the same time, Europeans captured other Europeans--Slavs from which 'slave' comes from--and sold them in huge numbers to Jews and Arabs. Just like blacks caught blacks and sold them to whites, whites did the same thing. Christian whites stopped enslaving one another and enslaved only pagan whites, but then eventually that practice was dropped too. But Africans have slavery to this day.
And slavery was ended in the early 20th century in the Arab world by Euro imperialists.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed that there are black Libyan rebels. Maybe these are the rebels' "tokens". It's hard to say how much of these reprisals is as a result of racial animus or simply due to of hatred of the Gaddafy regime. I doubt that white European mercenaries would have given a free pass if they had been engaged in indiscriminate killing.

People are too quick to play the race card. There were numerous examples where both the white Western Allies and white Soviets summarily executed white German concentration camp guards. No racial outrage there!

Anonymous said...

"But Bahrain is closely allied with Saudi Arabia, of whom the US is a client state."

Fixed that for you.

Rainforest Giant said...

I can just see those plucky, valient rebels now!

"Achmed, quickly we must choose the women of our right hand before all the good ones are gone!"

I see another market for slaves, home for jihadis and kleptocracies all over north Africa.

Man De Novo said...

Hey Bantam, I can explain that BBC news article. Here's the comment I posted:

The facts presented in this article do not support the idea that ancestry has nothing to do with athletic success. Just the opposite, in fact. The term "black" is an extremely broad and imprecise term and is therefore virtually useless. That is partly why this issue has been so confused. If we simply abandon this term and use narrower and more accurate terms like "Nandi" or "Ibo", then it becomes absolutely clear that something, whether you want to call it "race", "ethnicity" or "ancestry", in the sense of particular pools of genes, IS highly correlated with athletic success and many other things like IQ, disease resistance, etc. But of course Syed would prefer not to use more precise terminology as that would undermine his little rhetorical trick.

Oh, and about that "There is far more genetic variation within racial groups (around 85%) than there is between racial groups (just 15%)". That's called "Lewontin's fallacy".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewontin%27s_fallacy%22_%28scientific_paper%29

Only someone ignorant of genetics (or purposefully trying to deceive) would mention that in an article in 2011.

Finally, about the Mullainathan and Bertrand paper. We live in an era of massive affirmative action. If you were employer who knew that this means minorities are often granted credentials beyond their actual demonstrated capability, would YOU treat their applications exactly the same?

Sorry to burst your little bubbles with cold hard truth. Try using something other than paper-thin arguments next time.

Kylie said...

Oh, that inevitable.

I thought you were referring to calls for the West (led by guess who) to engage in another orgy of nation-building on the Dark Continent, so as to ensure a democratic future for the Libyans and a safer world for the rest of us.

jody said...

i have not been following this too closely but i saw some "rebels" with a G36.

yeah...no. pretty obviously either libyans who had been armed by some other nation, or they were special forces from some other nation.

Paul Mendez said...

Go to YouTube and search on combinations of "Libya" "African" and "mercenary." Lots of rebel videos showing how much they hate them.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman said...

The rebels kept losing but they kept losing battles nearer and nearer to the capital - and now in the capital!

The "rebels" could barely hold their own home turf even with massive US & NATO strikes and air cover.

They didn't suddenly develop the ability to push deep into Quadaffi's HQ. No doubt, US & NATO special forces had to step up their covert operations and take a more active role in the fighting.

Gunnery Sargent Hartman

More pressing real problems said...

Consider an experiment by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, two American economists. They drafted 5,000 CVs and placed archetypal "black" names such as Tyrone or Latoya on half of them and "white" names such as Brendan or Alison on the other half. They then divided the white CVs into high and low quality and did the same with the black CVs.

Even ignoring the question of if two random black/white populations are statistically equal in every way for every job (eg would you rather have a black man or white woman as a firefighter), the researchers clearly stacked the deck by comparing with low-class black names with middle/high-class white names. They also probably did they same with other factors as well to engineer their desired result.

How about comparing resumes with middle/upperclass black names like Mary, Martin and Michael vs low-class white names like Billy Joe Jeb Bob, Destiny or Shyann?

Laban said...

Anon - "Gaddafi learned to be a good little boy"

Up to a point. Google "Gadaffi son Switzerland".

Bantam - Matthew Syed is attempting to become the Malcolm Gladwell of the UK.

Whiskey said...

Khadaffi did dump his nukes and offer rapprochement with the West for investment money ... but as noted he was blackmailing the Europeans over mass immigration there and that did not endear him.

The Duck of Death would likely have remained in power, however, were it not for the uprisings, caused by massive food/energy price hikes, first in Tunisia, then Egypt, and finally Libya.

That left Europeans close to Khadaffi with choices: do nothing, hope for the best outcome; back Khadaffi and hope he wins, back the rebels and hope they win. Doing nothing was not in the cards because it would have left them at the mercy of Camp of the Saints which scares the hell out of the Italians and French. Thus it was down to Khadaffi or the rebels and the odds were with the rebels.

Aging dictators facing rebellions late in their regime don't last very long. The only one who had done so was Assad Senior and Saddam. By this time all the brutality tends to be used up (people expect the brutality) and it takes massive killing by a well organized military to retain power, and not have the military itself assume command. The smart money was on the rebels, because Khadaffi's strategic position was poor.

Whiskey said...

Khadaffi's position was poor because he could not raise enough money fast enough to buy off protests, nor did he have a massive Syrian or Iraqi military under his tribal control to kill about 40% or so of military age men in rebel places. While still retaining control and not losing to some young military officer himself. Libya is big, spread out, command and control are difficult, Khadaffi has relatively few infantry or helicopters or artillery (good for mass killing of one's own population) like Saddam or Assad in similar straights. Unlike the Saudis he could not buy his way out.

Thus he was likely to lose, at least in the Eastern part, and the worst of all worlds was continued fighting ala Yemen in the 1960's-80's or Somalia making the place a lawless haven -- right next door to Europe.

Truth said...

Oh, is you guy's fake race war back on?

Bantam said...

Thanks Man De Novo & Laban; I guess his next article will explain how Jews are not that clever. After all a mere 181 of them got a Nobel, while the remaining 15 Million didn't, did they?

Paul Mendez said...

i have not been following this too closely but i saw some "rebels" with a G36.

Since it is common knowledge that all rebels typically purchase their own equipment and supplies using personal funds -- often by taking out a 2nd mortgage or an advance on their Discover card -- this is quite the smoking gun!

Anonymous said...

No.Actually Gaddafi was very efficient in keeping immigrants out of the Mediterranean.
He kept his side of the bargain - probably with some rather ruthless policing - and the flow of 'immigrants' across the Mediterranean Sea slowed to a trickle in the last few yeras.It's only picked up now that the Italians did the dirty on him.
The bribe the Italians paid for this was money well spent, considering.Plus the fact Italians were favored in oil and other deals in Libya.That piece of realpolitik worked heavily in Italy's favor.Only interfering b*stards like Britain's mega-stupid William Hague ruined it - a man with as much depth of knowledge as a pancake.

Georgia Resident said...

If racially motivated reprisals against black Africans in Libya become the rule, I foresee western countries being cajoled into accepting black African refugees from Libya in droves. You know, rather than telling them to go back to Chad.
So while it may seem illogical for Barack Obama to take the side of mostly Caucasian rebels against the Pan-African Gaddafy (Qathaafee, Kadafy, Qaddafi?) in the short run, in the long run it serves his goal of further flooding the west with nonwhite
immigrants.

Anonymous said...

According to report, NATO has already lost control of Tripoli to Al Qaeda affiliated rebels led by Abdel Hakim Belhadj

Lawful Neutral said...

I have a smashing idea! Why don't we resettle the regime's Black supporters here in the US?

Caleo said...

I stand corrected. According to several sources including Wikipedia, Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962, Yemen in 1962 and the United Arab Emirates in 1963. Oman finally relented in 1970.
Ethiopia only abolished slavery in 1942, and up until the 1930's, out of a total population of 11 million, an estimated 2 to 4 million were slaves. Ouch.
Apparently, not only is slavery alive and well in Africa today, but it is actually growing and expanding in Sudan.
But my original point stands. Not only have Arabs and African muslims never apologized for slavery, no one has ever asked them to.
Apologies are only demanded of white Americans and Europeans.
I believe that glaring contradiction should be thrown at any leftist/progressive who whines about the horrible racist oppression of modern America.

Broken Clock said...

Way off topic, but I'm so glad we live in a time when schools can focus on the really important things, like humiliating kids who bring paper lunch bags and plastic sandwich bags to school. Kinda shocked it's not getting more derision in the conservative blogosphere.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps someone else has mentioned this, but Uncle Tim Wise is at it again:

http://www.timwise.org/2011/08/race-intelligence-and-the-limits-of-science-reflections-on-the-moral-absurdity-of-racial-realism/#.TllbEoKs1fE.facebook

Kylie said...

"I have a smashing idea! Why don't we resettle the regime's Black supporters here in the US?"

You are such a tease. You didn't even post your address.

Broken Clock said...

"If racially motivated reprisals against black Africans in Libya become the rule, I foresee western countries being cajoled into accepting black African refugees from Libya in droves. You know, rather than telling them to go back to Chad."

Well every African refugee - yesterday, today, tomorrow - comes with his own sob story, whether the ones from Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, or anywhere else. At some point the West has to grow a backbone and refuse to let them in. Far more likely they'll grow a backbone now, when unemployment rates are high and climbing, the economy is stsagnant, and when the EU is cracking up over bailouts.

The conditions most likely to incite the proper political repsonse is to have a large flood of refugees at the same time as an economic crisis. Those conditions are in place now.

Broken Clock said...

Well the latest news is that the rebels, after receiving several billion dollars in indirect U.S. aid, are refusing to hand over the Lockerbie bomber because he's 'at death's door.'

Glad we cleared that up.

Geoff Matthews said...

Love the alternate spelling for the Libyan dictator. I'd like to suggest some other alternatives;

kahtoffee
Gahdoffee
Quudawfee

R/A said...

Perhaps someone else has mentioned this, but Uncle Tim Wise is at it again:


I just skimmed, but it looks like he's bought into race as a real category and admits that there may be genetic differences in IQ. Wow.

Anonymous said...

"Oh, is you guy's fake race war back on?"

It is adorable how increasingly disconnected from reality you have become.

Marlo said...

"I've noticed that there are black Libyan rebels. Maybe these are the rebels' "tokens". It's hard to say how much of these reprisals is as a result of racial animus or simply due to of hatred of the Gaddafy regime. I doubt that white European mercenaries would have given a free pass if they had been engaged in indiscriminate killing.

People are too quick to play the race card. There were numerous examples where both the white Western Allies and white Soviets summarily executed white German concentration camp guards. No racial outrage there!"

Indeed. I just read a story about how Khadafy's daughter in law tortured her Ethiopian maid. She was burned pretty badly. Should we assume that the maid was mistreated because she's black?

Also, those who try to make this into a "negroid" vs "caucasian" conflict are forgetting that most north africans have ancestry from sub-saharan africa.

And kudos to whomever posted the link to the Condi photos. I don't blame Khadafy for liking her. She's hot.

Anonymous said...

Re Time Wise:

One wonders if he -- or someone who counsels him on such matters -- isn't hearing footsteps behind him after the recent study demonstrating a genetic basis of IQ of at least 50% based on 500K SNPs.

Really, how much wiggle room is there for a dominantly environmental explanation of the Black-White IQ gap after that? Sure, one can always contrive an environmental explanation, but one starts to be reduced to claiming that "stereotype threat" makes it all happen, while other environmental factors -- the sort of things that differ significantly even within races, such as SES -- do, as suggested by the recent study, precious little.

If that study holds up, I expect there will be A LOT of consternation on the other side of this issue. Once one gives up on the environment having a great effect on IQ within races, it's VERY hard to put up a plausible story in which the environment almost entirely accounts for the very substantial difference between races. This is one of the reasons that those who attempt to demonstrate that the IQ gap is dominantly environmental in origin ALWAYS downplay the genetic basis of IQ in general. They realize perfectly well that there's no scientifically consistent way to allow genetics a big role within groups, but not between groups.

Anonymous said...

"Love the alternate spelling for the Libyan dictator. I'd like to suggest some other alternatives;
kahtoffee
Gahdoffee
Quudawfee"

It's Go-Daffy now.

Anonymous said...

The bribe the Italians paid for this was money well spent, considering. Plus the fact Italians were favored in oil and other deals in Libya.


Let's look at this from another angle. What if the Italians had taken a different approach? They could have used their own men to patrol their own country and gained the respect (not love) of others and the self respect and loyalty and love of their own citizens. Instead of being cowardly paying tribute, they would be feared by idiots and loved by their women. Even the simple will respect what is respectable. Policing one's own borders is respectable and respected even if not loved. The girly men need to quit supplicating like women wanting to be loved.

Anonymous said...

Khadaffi did dump his nukes and offer rapprochement with the West for investment money ... but as noted he was blackmailing the Europeans over mass immigration there and that did not endear him.


Cad-half-y couldn't blackmail them if they wouldn't play along. If they just called his bluff and told him that they would happily shoot them or sink them themselves.

corvinus said...

Also, those who try to make this into a "negroid" vs "caucasian" conflict are forgetting that most north africans have ancestry from sub-saharan africa.

True. I say this all the time. I'm willing to guess that the average Maghrebi is about 1/4 black. If they were Spanish-speaking and Catholic, they'd fit right in in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico.

ATBOTL said...

I've seen plenty of pictures and video of black Libyan rebel fighters. I think most Libyans know who is a black Libyan and who is a mercenary from Nigeria.

Corvinus, a DNA study put Moroccans at 25% black. Other North Africans are probably less.

Arabs in general are mixed. The people who lived in North Africa and the Middle East before Islam were undoubtedly whiter than they people who live there now. You don't have to be a Nordicist to see that.

hbd chick said...

from time magazine:

The Disinvited: The New Libya's New Racism

new racism?

David Davenport said...

It sure would be funny if Khadaffi popped up in say, Chad, with a whole truckload of gold.

Whiskey's touched on a rumor that's going around the Internet.

Which is: that Kadaffy has a big stash of gold bullion somewhere in TripOli and different "rebel" groups are treasure hunting for it.

Maoreover, that the beloved Libyan has been one of the big players driving up the price of AU and has thereby tilted Western speculators towards gelt.

Anonymous said...

"I've seen plenty of pictures and video of black Libyan rebel fighters."

I think you shouldn't confuse reality with staged propaganda photo shoots.