Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: December 2025
55 minutes ago
Monday, 21 February 2011
Full text of Saif Gaddafi's speech, as Transcribed and tweeted live by @SultanAlQassemi with screenshots from AlJazeera.
I saw that I had to speak to you. Many Libyans asked me to speak. I don't have a paper or a document to read from.I will not speak in classical Arabic, I will speak in Libyan, I don't have any papers, this is a talk from the heart & mind. We all know that the region is passing through an earthquake, a hurricane or change. If this change does not come from the govts it will come from the people, we have seen this in other Arab countries. Today I will tell you only truth only. We know that there are opposition figures living abroad who have support in Libya. There people try to use Facebook for a revolution to copy Egypt. These people want to bring Libya to what happened in Egypt & Tunisia. We saw this on facebook and on emails. The country did a pre-emptive move by arresting some people before the protests, shots were fired, people died. The anger was directed at the police in Benghazi. People wanted to storm the police stations, people died, funerals occurred. This is a summary of what happened in Bengazi, now there is a major Fitna and a threat to the unity of Libya. Of course there were many deaths, which angered many people in Benghazi, but why were there people killed? The army was under stress, it is not used to crowd control so they shot, but I called them. The army said that some protesters were drunk, others were on hallucinogens or drugs. The army has to defend its weapons. And the people were angry. So there were deaths, but in the end Libyans were killed.
There are thee parts behind this
1- Political Activists whom we agree with,
2- What happened in Bayda are Islamic elements. Bayda is my town, my mother is from there. People called me. They stole weapons and killed soldiers. They want to establish an Islamic Emirate in Bayda. Some people took drugs & were used by these protesters.
3. The third part are these children who took the drugs and were used. These are facts like it or not.
We have arrested tens of Arabs and Africans, poor people, millions were spent on them to use them by millionaire businessmen. There are people who want to establish a countries in parts of Libya to rule, Like the Islamic Emirate. One person said he is the Emir of Islamic Emirate of Darna. The Arabic Media is manipulating these events. This Arabic media is owned by Arabs who are distorting the facts but also our media failed to cover the events.
Then there are the Baltagiya who destroyed public property, they fled jails. There are our brothers who sit and drink coffee and watch TV and laugh at us when they see us burn our country.
t is no lie that the protesters are in control of the streets now. Libya is not Tunis or Egypt. Libya is different, if there was disturbance it will split to several states. It was three states before 60 years. Libya are Tribes not like Egypt. There are no political parties, it is made of tribes. Everyone knows each other. We will have a civil war like in 1936. American Oil Companies played a big part in unifying Libya. Who will manage this oil? How will we divide this oil amongst us? Who will spend on our hospitals? All this oil will be burnt by the Baltagiya (Thugs) they will burn it. There are no people there. 3/4s of our people live in the East in Benghazi, there is no oil there, who will spend on them? Your children will not go to schools or universities. There will be chaos, we will have to leave Libya if we can't share oil. Everyone wants to become a Sheikh and an Emir, we are not Egypt or Tunisia so we are in front of a major challenge.
We all now have arms. At this time drunks are driving tanks in central Benghazi. So we all now have weapons. The powers who want to destroy Libya have weapons. There will be a war & no future. All the firms will leave, we have 500 housing units being built, they won't be completed. Remember my words. 200 billion dollars of projects are now underway, they won't be finished.
You can say we want democracy & rights, we can talk about it, we should have talked about it before. It's this or war. Instead of crying over 200 deaths we will cry over 100,000s of deaths. You will all leave Libya, there will be nothing here. There will be no bread in Libya, it will be more expensive than gold.
Before we let weapons come between us, from tomorrow, in 48 hours, we will call or a new conference for new laws. We will call for new media laws, civil rights, lift the stupid punishments, we will have a constitution. Even the LEader Gaddafi said he wants a constitution. We can even have autonomous rule, with limited central govt powers. Brothers there are 200 billion dollars of projects at stake now. We will agree to all these issues immediately. We will then be able to keep our country, unlike our neighbors. We will do that without the problems of Egypt & Tunisia who are now suffering. There is no tourism there. We will have a new Libya, new flag, new anthem. Or else, be ready to start a civil war and chaos and forget oil and petrol.
What is happening in Bayda and Benghazi is very sad. How do you who live in Benghazi, will you visit Tripoli with a visa? The country will be divided like North and South Korea we will see each other through a fence. You will wait in line for months for a visa. If we don't do the first scenario be ready for the second scenario:
The British FM called me. Be ready for a new colonial period from American and Britain. ou think they will accept an Islamic Emirate here, 30 minutes from Crete? The West will come and occupy you. Europe & the West will not agree to chaos in Libya, to export chaos and drugs so they will occupy us.
In any case, I have spoken to you, we uncovered cells from Egypt and Tunisia and Arabs. The Libyans who live in Europe and USA, their children go to school and they want you to fight. They are comfortable. They then want to come and rule us and Libya. They want us to kill each other then come, like in Iraq. The Tunisians and Egyptians who are here also have weapons, they want to divide Libya and take over the country.
We are in front of two choices, we can reform now, this is an historic moment, without it there will be nothing for decades. You will see worse than Yugoslavia if we don't choose the first option. Gaddafi is not Mubarak or Ben Ali, a classical ruler, he is a leader of a people. 10,000s of Libyans are coming to defend him. Over coastline Libyans are coming to support Gaddafi. The army is also there, it will play a big part whatever the cost. The army will play a big role, it is not the army of Tunisia or Egypt. It will support Gaddafi to the last minute. Now in the Green Square people shoot so that they show the world that the army is shooting. We must be awake.
Now comes the role of the National Guard and the Army, we will not lose one inch of this land. 60 years ago they defended Libya from the colonialists, now they will defend it from drug addicts. Most of he Libyans are intelligent, they are not Baltagiya (thugs) Benghazi is a million and a half not the few thousands who are in the streets. We will flight to the last man and woman and bullet. We will not lose Libya. We will not let Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and BBC trick us.
We will live in Libya and die in Libya. (Ends)
BIG thanx @exiledsurfer!
themoornextdoor Kal
They cannot say: "These are bread riots, Twitter & Facebook revolutions"; as the Libyans show us: these are real, human uprisings.
Australian radio’s lowest hour
Here’s an audio track of 2GB’s Chris Smith last week on the eve of the asylum seeker funerals. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. In a word: disgusting.
Via
Shock jock Chris Smith slammed over asylum death quiz
UNFUGNBELIEVABLE!!!
Via
Shock jock Chris Smith slammed over asylum death quiz
UNFUGNBELIEVABLE!!!
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Under the U.S. Supreme Court: Using Twitter to build WikiLeaks case
As the United States tries to build its case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, prosecutors are seeking Twitter messages sent by supposed WikiLeaks supporters -- and possibly message information from Facebook, Skype and Google. At stake in the legal fight -- beyond placing criminal responsibility for thousands of classified U.S. documents being posted on the Internet -- is how much privacy Twitter and other social network users can expect or whether such messages are considered private at all.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation went to court in Alexandria, Va., last week to try to stop the government's acquisition of the Twitter messages.
An Assange lawyer said earlier an array of social networks, not just Twitter, was being mined by the government for information.
Ironically, the Alexandria hearing occurred on the same day President Barack Obama was publicly telling autocratic governments: "The world is changing … with a young, vibrant generation within the Middle East that is looking for greater opportunities. If you're governing these countries, you've got to get ahead of change; you can't get behind the curve."
Twitter and other forms of Internet social networking are given credit both for generating protests and keeping protesters in touch with each other. In Egypt and Tunisia, it led to regime change. Demonstrations inn Iran, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere are continuing.
On the same day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was giving a speech advocating the freedom of the Internet. She told a crowd at The George Washington University in Washington: "Egypt isn't inspiring people because they communicated using Twitter. It is inspiring because people came together and persisted in demanding a better future. Iran isn't awful because the authorities used Facebook to shadow and capture members of the opposition. Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people."...
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The girl who loves to levitate
Natsumi Hayashi
Via
China police break up 'protests' after online appeal
Police in China showed up in force in several major cities after an online call for a "jasmine revolution".
Calls for people to protest and shout "we want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness", were circulated on Chinese microblog sites.The message was first posted on a US-based Chinese-language website.
Several rights activists were detained beforehand and three people were arrested in Shanghai, but the call for mass protests was not well answered.
Reports from Shanghai and Beijing said there appeared to be many onlookers curious about the presence of so many police and journalists at the proposed protest sites, in busy city-centre shopping areas.
Police in the two cities dispersed small crowds who had gathered. There were no reports of protests in 11 other cities where people were urged to gather on Sunday.
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Shanghai says the men arrested there were roughly handled as they were dragged away shouting "why are you arresting me, I haven't done anything wrong".
Our correspondent says it was not clear what prompted the arrests and the men had not shouted any political slogans.
China's authorities blocked searches for the word jasmine on the internet.
Protesters in Tunisia who overthrew President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January called their movement the Jasmine Revolution.
On Saturday President Hu Jintao called for stricter controls on the internet "to guide public opinion" and "solve prominent problems which might harm the harmony and stability of the society".
@'BBC'
Middle East protests: Is it time for the west to come clean?
There are the people versus the regime; Islamists versus the secular; and autocratic, corrupt rulers pitted against a popular desire for democracy, human rights and economic inclusion. All of which contains some truths, but it remains a partial picture.
In our desire to create a joined-up narrative out of the unrest, from Yemen to Iraq and Bahrain, we have ignored the specifics. In the rush of politicians such as Hillary Clinton to support the new wave of "freedom", western governments seem to be replicating the same errors they made during the "colour" revolutions, mistaking the act of revolt for the outcome of a long period of revolution, and accepting the incomplete in the name of "stability".
For, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each of the autocracies now embroiled in popular uprisings is autocratic in its own way. What can be said about the events in Tunisia is as inapplicable to Egypt as it is to Bahrain or Yemen.
In truth, there are some broad common strands: each country has a young population with a significant, well-educated segment and many people looking for work. In each, power has been monopolised by a small elite, either drawn from a royal family or from a figure backed by the military and business and the west. Corruption is often rife; a culture of repression is vigorous and deeply ingrained.
But that tends to be where the similarities end. Take, for instance, comparisons between Egypt and Bahrain. The former is a huge state with a massive urban hinterland centring on Cairo, one of the planet's megacities. Its recent history includes a "revolution" in 1952 that was in reality a coup. Its social conflicts have been defined by the notion of the threat – in substantial part manufactured by the old regime – of the Muslim Brotherhood and a corrupt system of patronage overseen by the military and the associated National Democratic Party which have enjoyed a monopoly on power and economic opportunity.
Bahrain, for all of the similarity of some of the chants at the Pearl roundabout – and the violence used in the attempts to break the protest movement – has a social conflict very differently defined. It has been underpinned by a long-festering sectarian conflict in a Shia-majority country where a Sunni royal family has ruled since the 18th century.
Preferment for jobs, including the military and police, has not been through party patronage but through sect, resulting in a situation where the capital is largely Sunni and the far poorer countryside is Shia. Which leaves a profound challenge for the west, whose interventions in the region have historically tended to support exactly those autocrats whose power is now being challenged, while promoting neo-liberal economic policies that have enriched the minority elites while making daily life more difficult for many in the region.
It is not good enough to talk, as Clinton, Barack Obama, William Hague and others have done, in feeble generalities about "stability", "freedom" and "restraint" in a networked world where the weakness and slowness of expression of those sentiments is so rapidly exposed.
If western diplomacy – and media commentary – has a function in these times, it should be to expose and focus on the precise dynamics of the awful inequalities in these societies and the routine violence and oppression that sustains them.
If the west has a contribution to make, it is in an honest and accurate audit of the nature of the states our governments have for so long been supporting, not prevarication. To describe reality, not vague ideals, and in describing it, reboot the policies that have for so long supported repression and corruption.
Peter Beaumont @'The Guardian'
fieldproducer Neal Mann
Great line from Robert Fisk 'Just because Gaddafi is a nutter does not mean his people are fools' #Libya
Jah Wobble's top ten dub tracks
1 KING TUBBY MEETS ROCKERS UPTOWN Augustus Pablo
I first heard this as a pre-release in 1976. Love the sound of Augustus Pablo's melodica; I am also kinky for the sound of the dubbed-up timbale drums that feature on this recording. King Tubby was the king of pure, heavy-duty dub at that time. It was released in this country on Island Records. Hearing 'King Tubby' for the first time had a profound effect on me: it was like hearing music from another cosmos. There are any number of good King Tubby compilations now around - Trojan Records and the Blood & Fire label are good places to look.
2 CONCRETE DUB Bob Marley
I no longer have this record... in fact, I have not heard it for probably 25 years, so I hope it does really exist and is not a figment of my imagination. If memory serves me well, it was the dub version B-side of an Island 7" single; probably of the track called 'Concrete Jungle', from the Catch a Fire album. It must have been one of the first ever domestically released dub singles. It was great to hear a dub version of a Marley track - I nearly always preferred the dub version of a tune. There was more space, and the bass and drums were pushed to the fore.
3 MARCUS GARVEY (DUB VERSION) Burning Spear
One of the very first dub versions I ever heard. I heard it in 1975 on a Friday night on the Capital Radio reggae show. I used to listen to that show religiously - Tommy Vance was the DJ. I now occasionally hear him DJing on heavy-rock stations as I channel-hop.
4 PROMISE IS A COMFORT TO A FOOL Trinity/Yabby You
A classic bassline, with a beautiful vocal refrain, and DJ chat. There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them. This is one of them. Other examples are Roy Budd's bass line to the title track of Mike Hodges Get Carter, and Cecil McBee's line on Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' are two that come immediately to mind. The crediting of reggae musicians is notoriously lax. There are three possible players, re this particular tune. All giants of the bass - Robbie Shakespeare, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Clinton Fearon. If I had to put money down on who it is on this track, I would say it was Mr Fearon.
5 TWO SEVENS CLASH Culture
For a while back in 1977, you could not get away from this tune. It still sounds heavenly. It reminds me of walking back from a party in Hackney on a Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. I couldn't get the tune out of my head.
6 JUJU MUSIC King Sunny Ade
There was a little-known dub version of this classic album, mixed by an engineer that I worked with, called Groucho. What he did was devastating. I would love to hear it again. It was on Island (again!) and was released around 1982.
7 ROWING Dennis Bovell
One of the great musicians of his generation. I used to watch him perform this with his band Matumbi. As with "Juju Music", I hankered after hearing it again. I'm pleased to say that the label Pressure Sounds has released a compilation of Dennis's dub stuff, which includes this track.
8 THE SAME SONG Israel Vibration
Similar to our own late, and very great Ian Dury, 'Skeleton,' 'Apple' and 'Wiss' [Israel Vibration's three members] were stricken by polio in the fifties. This blend of their vocals within a dub context is wonderful. Yet again, there is a great compilation on Pressure Sounds.
9 CONSCIOUS MAN DUB Lee Perry and the Jolly Brothers
You could not have a dub selection without Lee "Scratch" Perry appearing. This is a great example of his idiosyncratic style.
10 SMILING STRANGER John Martyn
This is taken from his 1980 album One World. It was one of the first records outside reggae to utilise dub techniques. Superb.
@'Fodderstomph'
Notes:
A 'Baker's Dozen' out of Wobble's top ten dub tracks. I have included the vocal versions of the Culture & Israel Vibration songs and two versions of 'Concrete Jungle'. Is that single just a figment of the Wob's imagination? Certainly there was no dub version on the 1973 Island 7" (WIP 6164) The B side was a track called 'Reincarnation Soul' and the versions here are a much earlier cut of the tune produced by Lee Perry as well as an unreleased dub version from 1976. Regarding the King Sunny Adé Remix album. I think that may have been a perk of him being signed to Island Records at the time as to my knowledge the only dub cut to have been released was this version of 'Ja Funmi'. Lastly John Martyn spent a long time in Jamaica back around 1976 and also played on some Lee Perry & Burning Spear sessions amongst others. 'Big Muff' from 'One World' was co-written with Lee Perry and Perry's 'underwater swirling' effects are all over the album.
Get it HERE
UPDATE:
Thanx to 'Lightning Clap' the mystery of 'Concrete Dub' has been solved. It is the B side of the 'Jah Live' single released in 1975. Co-written and mixed by Lee Perry. Many thnx. You can get it HERE.Another liberated post from HerrB's sadly missed 'Pathway To Unknown Worlds' blog
Jah Wobble - Fireside Chat @ RBMAR
Public Image Limited - Memories - Virgin
Public Image Limited - Religion I - Virgin
Public Image Limited - Public Image - Virgin
Public Image Limited - Poptones - Virgin
Jah Wobble - Beat The Drum For Me - Virgin
Jah Wobble - Not Another - Virgin
Jah Wobble, Jaki Liebezeit, Holger Czukay - How Much Are They? - Island
Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay - Hold On To Your Dreams - Island
Jah Wobble - Enough - Southern Records
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart - Becoming More Like God - Island
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart - Visions Of You - Oval Records
Primal Scream - Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In 2 Parts) - Creation
Bjork & David Arnold - Play Dead - Island Records
Jah Wobble & Bill Laswell - Orion - Palm Pictures/Axiom
Jah Wobble - New Mexico Dub - Trojan Records
Jah Wobble - Dragon And Phoenix Dub - 30 Hertz Records
Jah Wobble & The Nippon Dub Ensemble - K Dub 05 - 30 Hertz Records
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