Yet more rioting in Libya. Wait, WHO are they rioting against?

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

Hundreds of protesters in Libya have launched an attack on the jihadist militia responsible for killing the U.S. ambassador last week. 

The pro-American backlash on Friday night saw the Ansar al-Sharia Brigade driven out of its base in the city of Benghazi, where Chris Stevens and three other U.S. officials were murdered in an attack on the local consulate. 

The unprecedented movement suggests that ordinary Libyans are rising up against Al Qaeda fighters who seek to hijack the democratic reforms of the Arab Spring. 

Ansar al-Sharia militants initially fired in the air to disperse the crowd, but eventually abandoned the site with their weapons and vehicles after it was overrun by waves of protesters shouting 'No to militias.' 

'I don't want to see armed men wearing Afghani-style clothes stopping me in the street to give me orders, I only want to see people in uniform,' said Omar Mohammed, a college student who took part in the takeover of the site. 

No deaths were reported in the incident, which came after tens of thousands marched in Benghazi against armed militias. One vehicle was also burned at the compound. 

Wow! So perhaps it is time for Americans to realize that not ALL Muslims are radical Jihadists determined to spread violent and disharmony among the people o the Middle East.

Gee didn't Sean Hannity and Latino Sarah Palin rip into our President just a few days ago for trusting these people to make the right choice on their own instead of having a prefabricated, by America of course, government foisted upon them? Yeah, I kind of think we did.

Well I wonder what their response to this might be? Oh never mind, if they can't somehow fault President Obama in some way they will simply ignore it.

P.S. By the way these protests have openly spread since this  incident and protestors have now seized a raft of other paramilitary bases as well.

Franklin Graham arrogantly implies that Obama is not a true Christian while embarrassing himself and his faith on Morning Joe.

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We live in a country that declares in its Constitution, Article VI paragraph 3, that there will be, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States," and yet no President has ever been elected to office who did not declare that he was a Christian.

And now that there is a black man in the White House, even THAT is not good enough. Now the President has to be the "right kind" of Christian.

At least according to this monstrous douchebag Franklin Graham.

Graham also expresses displeasure with the Arab Spring sweeping across the Middle East because collaterally Christians have been killed and terrorized, despite the fact that this was the will of the people and in many cases they had suffered great hardship and even death at the hands of those they had now overthrown. But to Graham that really does not count because to him a Christian life is worth far more than the life of a Muslim.

It is beyond clear that Franklin Graham has NO interest in a Democratic America, and clearly supports a theocracy, which I also believe is the underlying desire of Rick Santorum as well.

As if these arrogant pricks have any right to tell people how to live, love, and raise their families.

Thankfully John Heilemann is on this panel to call Franklin Graham out on the double standard that he applies to certain politicians, giving Rick Santorum a pass, and doing everything but calling President Obama and Mitt Romney pagans.

This interview completely pissed me of, and I found myself yelling back at Graham, and wanting to tell this hypocritical bastard just what I think of his religious litmus test and desire to impose HIS definition of morality on the American people.

Did 2011 signal the end of the United States as a "Hyperpower" in the world? Could be.

Courtesy of Juan Cole:

The United States is no longer the hyperpower. It can no longer necessarily act unilaterally by launching a major war of aggression at will. It lacks the resources. And, it has significant challengers in some theaters. The Obama administration was only able to act in Libya because Russia and China had allowed a strong UNSC resolution in favor of intervention to be passed. Had either exercised a veto, the Libya War would have been forestalled. And, even with a UNSC resolution authorizing the use of force, Washington felt the need to lead from behind and let France, Britain and Qatar stay in the forefront, because it feared bad PR if it were perceived to be yet again unilaterally attacking a Muslim country. 

A corollary is that each region of the world is now more independent of the US than it had been. Brazil defied the US on Libya and Latin America is defying the US on relations with Palestine. 

The greatest trend to greater independence of the US can be seen in the Middle East and North Africa. Some regimes that were almost sycophants toward Western capitals have been swept away. Indigenous and nativist political movements, especially those based in political Islam, are doing well. Religious parties came to power in Tunisia and Morocco, forming governments and selecting the prime minister. A similar development will likely occur in Egypt, Libya and Yemen in 2012. All of these governments had been dominated by billionaire politicians and increasingly Neoliberal economic policies. The new cabinets dominated by political Islam are economic populists, but likely will not challenge the US significantly. Neither can they be depended upon, however, to do as they’re told, in the way that Mubarak could have been. 

It is too early to say whether the assertion of people power, in part via the internet, in the Arab world marks a structural, long-term change in the way business is done. What can be said is that the Middle East is emerging as more independent than it had been since the 1970s.

Personally I do not see this as a bad thing, and neither should any Americans tired of seeing our wealth and resources, not to mention the lives of our young men and woman, wasted in attempts to control the politics and people of countries around the world.

And I have little doubt that this fear surrounding our loss of influence in these Middle Eastern countries is one of the driving forces behind the increase in Islamophobia among the Republican party. The idea that these countries will snip their puppet strings, and finally exert free will over their own futures, frightens the Republicans, and their corporate masters who fear losing access to all of that delicious oil.

The irony of all of this is that supposedly this is what the Bush administration had hoped to inspire in the Middle east by taking out Saddam Hussein as Iraq's dictator, democracy flourishing in the Middle East. Yet now that their wishes seem to be coming true, the GOP seem ot be panic stricken about what their invasive policies have helped to create.

Gotta love Karma, don't you?

Reports out of Libya confirm death of Muammar Gaddafi.

Courtesy of Reuters:

Muammar Gaddafi was killed on Thursday as Libya's new leaders declared they had overrun the last bastion of his long rule, sparking wild celebrations that eight months of war may finally be over. 

Details of the death near Sirte of the fallen strongman were hazy but it was announced by several officials of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and backed up by a photograph of a bloodied face ringed by familiar, Gaddafi-style curly hair. 

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

This a breaking story, and apparently it has not been confirmed by the state department, but there are numerous confirmations coming out of Libya, including from the Libyan Information Minister,  that the tyrant has been killed, and there are widespread reports of rebel celebrations in the streets

I am not exactly sure what this means for the relationship between the United States and Libya, but it looks like President Obama's early support of the rebels was certainly the smart choice, and the recent visit by Secretary of State Clinton, may provide the United States with some influence over the type of government that finally emerges from the ashes.

These are fascinating times we live in, that is for damn sure!
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