But strong words must be paired with strong action. Canada and the international community must stand by the people of Libya who, like so many others throughout the Arab world, seek the basic human rights that should be enjoyed by all who desire them. Whereas the protests elsewhere have led to relatively peaceful transitions or to dialogues for reform, Libya’s rulers have chosen repression and slaughter.
Our response may very well determine whether the next authoritarian government threatened follows Gadhafi’s lead.
The Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui offers another possible, admittedly imperfect, solution to the Libyan problem. Gadhafi has already lost the eastern half of the country, he reasons, so why not just let the East “peel off” and become its own country. Gadhafi might wage a brutal war to win it back, but Siddiqui thinks it’s more likely he will “let it go to keep what he has,” and the international community could flood the East with aid, effectively salvaging half the country while waiting for Gadhafi to die.
Or at least they did until last month’s Jasmine Revolution. But last week, faster than you could scream ‘Allahu Akbar’, hundreds of Islamists raided Abdallah Guech Street armed with Molotov cocktails and knives, torching the brothels, yelling insults at the prostitutes and declaring that Tunisia was now an Islamist state. As soldiers fired into the air to disperse them, the Islamists won a promise from the interim government that the brothels would be permanently closed.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday urged Middle East leaders to listen to the voices of citizens who have taken to the streets in masses to demand a change in government -- though such protests in his own country have been crushed with brute force.
Ahmadinejad "strongly recommended such leaders to let their peoples express their opinions," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
via cnn.com
Besides the terrible killings inflicted by the fanatics on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, Al-Qa'eda has lost credibility for enforcing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life. They include a ban on women buying suggestively-shaped vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar. Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: "
Two Libyan Air Force pilots defected to Malta on Monday after being asked to bomb Libyan citizens, a Maltese government source said. The pilots' fighter jets were armed with rockets and loaded machine guns, the source said. Malta is a short flight from Libya. via news.blogs.cnn.com
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (the Act) does not prohibit organizations from outsourcing their operations across international borders. via priv.gc.ca I've heard this a ton of times working for clients in Calgary, but this Case Summary would seem to indicate that's incorrect.
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As US secretary of state, Colin Powell gathered his notes in front of the United Nations security council, the man watching — Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the west's intelligence services as "Curveball" — had more than an inkling of what was to come. He was, after all, Powell's main source, a man his German handlers had feted as a new "Deep throat" — an agent so pivotal that he could bring down a government.
But the administration’s attempts to bestride events seem hollow. What appears to be happening is that everything in the Middle east is the same as it always was, only more so, and in a way that has shredded the diplomatic green baize routine. None of the hatreds, fault lines, corruption, ethnic divisions, schisms and vendettas of the region have been resolved; only now they are in the open and clamoring in the street, fueled by Google, Facebook and Twitter.