Muammar Gaddafi has been killed as hometown of Sirte finally falls

Alternate headline: Nobel Peace Prize Winner orders death of a tyrant!

FORMER Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has been killed in the final desperate battle for his home town of Sirte. From the Australian

I am certain that the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda will fill the void. I am also certain that things will get much worse in Libya.

The 69-year-old Gaddafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and greater democracy.

Gaddafi's son Mutassim was shot in the chest and killed. Confusion surrounds the fate of Gaddafi's favoured son, Saif al-Islam. Libyan state television said his son had suffered a similar fate, but other reports said he had been shot in the leg. This morning, Interpol and the International Criminal Court were still calling for Saif to surrender, sparking debate about his whereabouts.

Colonel Gaddafi was killed after being dragged from a drain by rebel fighters who had just won the battle for Sirte, Gaddafi's home town.

He had apparently been shot in the leg and the shoulder.

Looking bloodied, video images showed Gaddafi trying to flee his captors

He was transferred to a pickup truck, but was caught in crossfire and shot in the head, Libya's interim prime minister said.

"When the vehicle started moving, it was caught in crossfire between Gaddafi fighters and the revolutionaries, and he was shot in the head,'' according to Mahmoud Jibril.

"He was alive up to last moment, until he arrived at hospital'' in the town of Misrata.

People across Libya celebrated news of the death of Gaddafi who had brutally ruled Libya for 42 years.

News of Gaddafi's death was greeted with shock around the world US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, about to begin a television interview, was handed her mobile phone with the news sent as a text message on it.

"Wow!" she said.

Gaddafi had pledged to fight to the end and Saif al-Islam had vowed that "blood will flow" if rebels continued their fight both these statements proved to be true.

Saif al-Islam, educated at the London School of Economics, had long been groomed by Gaddafi as his eventual successor.

Gaddafi had been one of the world's most mercurial leaders, dominating Libya with a regime that often seemed run by his whims and bringing international condemnation and isolation on his country for years.

"We announce to the world that Gaddafi has been killed at the hands of the revolutionaries, and Gaddafi's tyranny and dictatorship has been finally ended for Libya and all the world and this chapter has been closed," National Transitional Council official Abdel Ghogha said at a news conference in Benghazi.

"[With] the news of the end of tyranny and dictatorship in Libya . . . it will never be the same again after the revolutionaries have been able to get to the heads of the tyrants . . . who met their fate and destiny, which is a fate and destiny of all dictators and tyrants," Mr Ghogha added.

"It is an historic moment. It is the end of tyranny and dictatorship. Gaddafi has met his fate,'' he added.

He said that the fugitive despot's death been "confirmed by our commanders on the ground in Sirte, those who captured him after he had been wounded in the battle for Sirte".

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed," Mr Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.

Thousands of people were murdered or imprisoned during Gaddafi's rule.

Libya has great wealth through oil but much of this wealth has been taken by Gaddafi, his family and his cronies.

Gaddafi had been barricaded in with his heavily armed loyalists in the last few buildings they held in Sirte, furiously battling with revolutionary fighters closing in on them.

A convoy of about 80 vehicles tried to flee the area and was blasted by NATO airstrikes.

French Defence officials said one of its warplanes had identified and fired a warning shot across the convoy, but it was not destroyed.

A US Predator drone had struck the same convoy, however, it was unclear if deposed Gaddafi was there.

Television footage showed footage of Gaddafi lying severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement.

The body was then taken to the nearby city of Misrata, which Gaddafi's forces besieged for months in one of the bloodiest fronts of the civil war. Al-Arabiya TV showed footage of Gadhafi's bloodied body carried on the top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, "The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain."

The news sparked celebrations across the country, amid hope the dictator's demise was the final chapter in the nine-month conflict that has cost thousands of lives.

Gaddafi's last stronghold, Sirte, had earlier fallen to forces loyal to the NTC, which formed after the collapse of the Gaddafi's regime.

An anti-Gaddafi fighter said the former leader had been found hiding in a hole and shouted "Don't shoot, don't shoot" when confronted by fighters of the NTC.

The NTC said that Moussa Ibrahim, the man who became the face of the Gaddafi regime as his international spokesman, had also been captured in Sirte.

In Sirte, medics said the defence minister in Gaddafi's ousted regime, Abu Bakr Yunis, had been killed in the battle. Yunis's body was identified at the field hospital where it was brought in on a pick-up truck.

NTC fighters who had fought in the bloody conflict that toppled the veteran despot at a cost of more than 25,000 lives were jubilant at the news of his capture.

Pick-up trucks blaring out patriotic music criss-crossed the streets of Sirte, as fighters flashed V-for-victory signs and chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

Many pick-up trucks are playing the new national anthem and other revolutionary songs.

"Sirte is free. The whole of Libya is free," said Khaled Ballam, field commander of the February 17 Brigade, which took part in the final assault on Sirte.

"We had some clashes but there was no fierce resistance as many Gaddafi fighters were trying to escape rather than fight because they had no other option. The game is over."

Abdul Matlub Saleh, a fighter from the February 17 Brigade, said: "Every inch of the city is liberated. Our people are spread everywhere. There is no fighting. The gunfire that you are hearing is all celebrations."

An AFP correspondent heard sporadic gunfire in the neighbourhood during the morning as NTC fighters went house to house to root out the snipers who have inflicted heavy losses in their ranks in recent days.

Medics said that at least three NTC fighters were killed and 30 wounded in the operation.

"I am happy we have got revenge for our people who suffered for all these years and for those who were killed in the revolution. Gaddafi is finished," said fighter Talar al-Kashmi.

Further reading: Libya and the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine.

There are many more links on R2P.

Oddly enough Soros' name may come up, but it was essentially drafted by Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister under a Labor Government, and Samantha Power, wife of Cass Sunstein. I am hearing alarm bells!

Robert Spencer is coming Downunder.

Details here and at SheikYerMami’s site.

Simon Deng - The United Nations: Accessory to Slavery and other Crimes Against Humanity

Simon Deng tells it like it is.

With thanks to HNY

Like you, I came to this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance to protest this third Durban conference which is an effort based on a set of lies, and organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

Durban III will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has lost its way. Its obsession with the Jewish obvious: . For over 50 years, 82% of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler could not have been made happier.

Given all the good Israel does in the world, given its democracy and its striving to follow the highest standards of human rights, even in the face of the most brutal, the most fanatic enemies, the Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people know that.

But friends, I come here today to make a different case. I come with what you might at first think is a radical proposition: I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black African population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, Sudan, about four million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed, and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

Everybody at the United Nations is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency to provide for them; this agency, UNWRA, treats them with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN even resisted using the word "slavery" to describe the enslavement of tens of thousands of my people. Why? Because slavery is a crime against humanity, apparently no one committing it wanted to end up before an international court. When Khartoum insisted that the term "abducted people" be substituted for the word "slaves," the UN, caved to Arab pressure and agreed. Try that in America. Try calling Frederick Douglas an "abducted person." It is outrageous.

The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the root causes of Sudan's conflicts. Take Darfur, for example. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict." It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism, as it has typically been practiced in Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And they also do not want to be Arabized. They like their own African languages and dress and customs. They resist Arabization. The Arab response is genocide. But nobody tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The regime is targeting the black Africans -- Muslims and Christians. This happened to the Nuba people before. In the 1990's hundreds of thousands were murdered; a large number of women were raped; children were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. Nobody at the UN told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you see a massive amount of outrage and reports and protests about this coming out of the UN or Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International? Do you hear them condemn Arab anti-black racism?

Look at the pages of the New York Times, or the record of the UN condemnations, What you will find is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages by the exaggerations of Palestinian suffering. Why? Because what Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin that we are all supposed to address.

The truth is that the West commits a real sin when it abandons us: the actual victims of non-Westerns. Our suffering has become almost taboo.

Let me return to the topic of slavery: while there are issues that divide public opinion, we can all agree that for one man to own another is a sin, and it should be stopped. The Americans tore themselves apart over the issue of slavery.

Chattel slavery, a centuries-long practice in Sudan, was revived as a tool of war in the early '90s. The Islamist regime in Khartoum declared jihad, or holy war, and thereby legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I do not like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when I was made a slave. An Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat destined to Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word "no." All I could say was "yes," "yes," "yes."

The United Nations knew about the brutal enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs from the early days of the conflict. Human Right Watch issued extensive reports about the issue. These reports gathered dust on UN shelves. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening.

As soon as the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, the UN agency backtracked, and proceeded to criticize the Non-Governmental Organizations that worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League. So much for "human rights for everybody".

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. In 2005, the refugees camped outside the offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Cairo looking for mercy. Instead, the United Nations closed its doors and left the helpless women and children at the mercy of the ruthless Egyptian security forces who brutally slaughtered at least 26 of them.

After this event the Sudanese realized that Arab racism is the same, whether it is in Khartoum or in Cairo. So they continued looking for a shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for punishingly long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

The fact that even Darfuris, who are Muslims, chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area, speaks volumes.. Israel is racist? Israel is against the Muslim world? Ask the thousands of black Muslim Darfuris who found shelter inside the Jewish state.

When I asked the refugees about the treatment they receive in Israel, their response is absolutely the opposite of what the United Nations alleges. They were welcomed and treated like human beings. Compared to the situation in Egypt, they described their lives in Israel as "heaven." No-one called them "abid" – an Arabic word for slaves often used in Sudan, Egypt and other Arab nations.

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. It is a state of people of the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with beautiful black Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Israel is a state that has taken my own black people in, rescued them, and helped them.

So, yes … my claim may be a radical claim: I claim that the victims who suffer most from the UN's anti-Israel policy are not just the Israelis but all those people who have to be ignored in order for the UN to tell its big lie against Israel: all those victims of non Western abuse, especially all those victims of Arab and Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab and Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

So far, the Israelis have only been cursed by the UN. But look at the situation of the Copts, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais and Sikhs who suffer from Islamic oppression. We all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned so that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

Before I conclude let me tell you a story that reflects a special connection that the people of South Sudan feel toward Israel. In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor, and then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked and numb. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On July 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. We achieved freedom despite the opposition from the Arab world and despite the United Nations, whose General Secretary, Bi Ki Moon, lobbied for the unity of Sudan. For the South Sudanese, that would mean continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland; and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I salute the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, who had the courage to state publicly that South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its people, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth.

This originally appeared in a a slightly different form as an address at a conference titled "The Perils of Global Intolerance", in New York City, September 22, 2011.

Petition: Cut off the $1.3B in aid annually to Egypt, unless they bring to justice the killers of the massacre of Coptic Christian

Sign here.

The Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church under the leadership of Pope Shenouda III met with seventy Bishops, on Monday October 10, 2011 in the Papal residence, Cairo, Egypt to discuss the events of the prior day in front of Maspiro where 24 of our beloved children were killed and at least 200 injured.

Coptic Christians feel that their problems are always being repeated without accountability and without the due justice of the law.Eyewitnesses & countless photographs and videos recount how the Egyptian Military used armored vehicles to mow down peaceful protesters.

WE PLEA to the President, and Congress, to push for a full investigation,to bring the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to cut off military aid until FULL COMPLIANCE.

Iran vows 'decisive action' on US claims of assassination plot

Will this be Obama’s War?

Iran vows 'decisive action' on US claims of assassination plot from the Australian

IRAN'S Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has warned of a "decisive response" to any "inappropriate action" over US claims of a Tehran-directed assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.

"If American officials are entertaining any illusions, they should know that any inappropriate action - whether political or security-related - will meet with the Iranian people's decisive response," he said in a speech in western Iran yesterday.

Ayatollah Khamenei, who has labelled the plot claims "absurd", said: "The Islamic Republic of Iran will face off any plot, or destructive or obstructive measures, with all its might."

President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in his first comments on US claims over the alleged plot, was quoted as saying: "Iran is a civilised nation and doesn't need to resort to assassination."

Addressing the US government, he said: "Terror belongs to you."

Highlighting an apparent schism with the President, Ayatollah Khamenei accompanied his warning with suggestion that Iran could scrap the post of a directly elected president.
He suggested that, in future, the president could be elected by MPs rather than through a national poll. It remained, he said, a "distant" prospect, but his words will embolden hardliners determined to oust Mr Ahmadinejad. Iran's two most powerful men have been in a power struggle since April, when Mr Ahmadinejad sacked his intelligence minister, only to see him reinstated by the Supreme Leader.

The President boycotted government for 11 days before bowing to an ultimatum from the Ayatollah to return or be dismissed.

US officials were yesterday consulting allies and other countries on ratcheting up pressure on Iran, which is already subject to UN and US sanctions over its controversial nuclear program.

Senior Democrat Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate intelligence committee, warned that the US and Iran were on a "collision course" as Tehran steps up its nuclear program and escalates hostilities with its alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington. She said this was not the time for war with Iran, but for stronger international sanctions to change its behaviour, saying she favoured sanctions on Iran's central bank.

"Iran is escalating, I believe, its nuclear development. Iran is increasingly hostile," she said in an interview with Fox News. "It's a very dangerous situation.

"If you project out a number of years, we are on a collision course. If we want to avoid it, we have to take action to avoid it."

Iran denies any involvement in the thwarted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir.

But US President Barack Obama has vowed Iran will "pay a price" for what he says is incontrovertible proof it had a hand in trying to contract a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit.

Saudi Arabia has said it will make "a suitable response" over the alleged plot, which it has requested be brought to the attention of the UN Security Council.

The US Justice Department and FBI say the alleged plot leads back to officials in the Quds Force, a special operations outfit within Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

Quds Force personnel are said to have transferred nearly $US100,000 ($97,094) to the bank account used by a member of the Mexican drug cartel who was really a paid US informant. The money was allegedly part of a $US1.5 million hit on Mr al-Jubeir, possibly through the bombing of a Washington restaurant.

An Iranian used car salesman who is a naturalised US citizen, Manssor Arbabsiar, is said to have confessed to acting as the go-between for his cousin, whom he described as a top Quds official. Mr Arbabsiar is in US custody, charged with the plot. The US has charged another Iranian, Gholam Shakuri, said to be an Iran-based Quds agent who flew to the US to speak with Mr Arbabsiar.