Libya: The end of the road for Kaddafi's tyranny?

When anti-government protests spread around the Arab world from Tunisia to Egypt to Jordan to Bahrain, I pointed out that in the most oppressive societies, Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia, no such movements had arisen. I thought this was because they had stagnant economies and their brutal regimes would countenance no mild sit-ins filled with protesters carrying placards and asking for change. They would plow their homes, kill the protesters and torture their loved ones before anything could get going. And the citizens of those lands, long afraid of their rulers, understood that.

The last time there was a protest movement in Syria, the Al-Assad regime had murdered roughly 20,000 opponents (mostly Sunni Islamists), killing them with military weaponry and covering their corpses with asphalt. Thomas Friedman, who witnessed the tarmac of death in Hama, Syria, called this response of the regime "the Hama rules."

But right now it appears I was completely wrong about Libya. It looks as if Col. Kaddafi (which can be spelled many different ways*) is losing his grip on power. This is what the New York Times is now reporting:

The 40-year-rule of the Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi appeared to teeter Monday as his security forces retreated to a few buildings in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, fires burned unchecked and senior government officials and diplomats announced defections. The country’s second-largest city remained under the control of rebels.

Security forces loyal to Mr. Qaddafi defended a handful of strategic locations, including the state television headquarters and the presidential palace, witnesses reported from Tripoli. Fires from the previous night’s rioting burned at many intersections, most stores were shuttered, and long lines were forming for a chance to buy bread or gas.

Unlike in Egypt, where American reporters were able to cover the story from on the ground amid the protesters, none of what is happening in Libya is transpiring on my televsion. Nonetheless, this sounds like very bad news for Col. Kaddafi. His opponents are obviously not taking over cities and government buildings without some violence of their own. At the same time, they are surely outgunned by Kaddafi's military and police. So it must be the case that Kaddafi's forces are defecting in large numbers or just refusing to fight.

In a sign of growing cracks within the government, several senior officials — including the justice minister and members of the Libyan mission to the United Nations — announced their resignations. And protesters in Benghazi, the second-largest city where the revolt began and more than 200 were killed, issued a list of demands calling for a secular interim government led by the army in cooperation with a council of Libyan tribes.

Kaddafi's official henchmen would not be leaving their posts if they didn't think the Colonel was going to be deposed from his throne in Tripoli. It's also a positive sign, from my secular perspective, that the protesters want a secular government. I would imagine, nonetheless, that some protesters against Kaddafi are Islamists.

The ubiquitous posters of Colonel Qaddafi around the capital had been torn down or burned, witnesses said.

You know you are in a shit-hole of a country when they have ubiquitous posters and statues and so on of the dictator. It's a message which says: 'I am the state. It's about me, not you, folks. You better bleeping kiss my ass or else.'

Tripoli descended into chaos in less than 24 hours as a six-day-old revolt suddenly spread from Benghazi across the country on Sunday. The revolt shaking Libya is the latest and most violent turn in a rebellion across the Arab world that seemed unthinkable just two months ago and that has already toppled autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia.

Not that the governments in Egypt or Tunisia were democracies, but it's quite unfair to them to even be mentioned in the same breath as a tyrant like Moammar Kaddafi.

In a rambling, disjointed address delivered about 1 a.m. on Monday, Mr. Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, played down the uprising sweeping the country, which witnesses and rights activists say has left more than 220 people dead and hundreds wounded from gunfire by security forces. He repeated several times that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt, ” neighbors to the east and west.

As Saddam Hussein's sons found out, it's not so good being the son of a toppled dictator. I would imagine that the Colonel's boy will soon be fleeing Libya. I'm not sure where he will wind up. Maybe Switzerland? I doubt he would enjoy living in a theocracy like Saudi Arabia.

News agencies reported that several foreign oil and gas companies were moving on Monday to evacuate their workers from the country. The Portuguese government sent a plane to Libya to pick up its citizens and other residents of the European Union, while Turkey sent two ferries for its construction workers in the strife-torn country, The Associated Press reported.

If this revolt in Libya does not end in a clean victory for the rebels or for Col. Kaddafi, I would think that world oil prices will go up for it. There was some of that with Egypt, just out of fears that the Suez Canal would shut down. However, Egypt is not a major oil producer. Libya is.

Oil prices jumped on Monday because of the ongoing turmoil in Libya, where Moammar Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, warned protesters on Sunday that they risked igniting a civil war in which Libya's oil wealth "will be burned." By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for March delivery was up $3.10 to $89.30.

The New York Times story notes that the Libyan regime is trying to protects its petroleum facilities:

The Quryna newspaper, which has ties to Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif, said that protests have occurred in Ras Lanuf, an oil town where some workers were being assembled to defend a refinery complex from attacks.

Quryna also reported that Mr. Qaddafi’s justice minister, Mustafa Abud Al Jeleil, had resigned in protest over the deadly response to the anti-government demonstrations.

How could one be a 'justice minister' in Kaddafi's government and be at all surprised that the Colonel's response to protests would be anything but deadly? I guess Mr. Al Jeleil thinks that Kaddafi is going to lose and that by quitting now the protesters will not want to kill him. I suspect, though, that there are going to be a lot of recriminations against Kaddafi's vassals, if the Colonel is driven from power.

Al-Manara, an opposition website, reported that a senior military official, Col. Abdel Fattah Younes in Benghazi, resigned, and the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Colonel Qaddafi ordered that one of his top generals, Abu Bakr Younes, be put under house arrest after disobeying an order to use force against protesters in several cities.

This is the sort of thing Hitler did when Nazi Germany was in its final days. It makes me wonder if Kaddafi won't end up taking his own life, just as Hitler did.

Protesters remained in control of Benghazi on Monday. Online videos showed protesters flying an independence flag over the roof top of a building in Benghazi, and a crowd celebrating what they called “the fall of the regime in their city.”

If Kaddafi makes a comeback, he is going to level everything in Benghazi. It has been from that second city where the protests against his regime have been strongest.

The younger Mr. Qaddafi blamed Islamic radicals and Libyans in exile for the uprising. He offered a vague package of reforms in his televised speech, potentially including a new flag, national anthem and confederate structure. But his main theme was to threaten Libyans with the prospect of civil war over its oil resources that would break up the country, deprive residents of food and education, and even invite a Western takeover.

With no tradition of democracy and with no free capitalist class, it would not be too surprising if theocrats come into power. If so, then the liberty won will soon enough be lost. Time will tell. However, I am heartened that the protesters' only published demands call for a secular government.

With little shared national experience aside from brutal Italian colonialism, Libyans tend to identify themselves as members of tribes or clans rather than citizens of a country, and Colonel Qaddafi has governed in part through the mediation of a “social leadership committee” composed of about 15 representatives of various tribes, said Diederik Vandewalle, a Dartmouth professor who has studied the country.

That makes it sound like Libya might break up into multiple new countries.

Over the last three days Libyan security forces have killed at least 223 people, according to a tally by the group Human Rights Watch. Several people in Benghazi hospitals, reached by telephone, said they believed that as many as 200 had been killed and more than 800 wounded there on Saturday alone, with many of the deaths from machine gun fire.

Compared with Egypt, 223 is a large number. Compared with most historical revolts and civil wars, 223 is nothing. I am somewhat surprised the number of deaths is not yet much larger.

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*This is what The Straight Dope reported about the spelling of Kaddafi's last name:

I count at least 12 different ways to spell the colonel's handle, including Qaddhafi (New York Review of Books), Qaddafi (New Republic), Gaddafi (Time), Kaddafi (Newsweek), Khadafy (Maclean's), Qadhafi (U.S. News & World Report), Qadaffi (Business Week), and Gadaffi (World Press Review). Libya's UN mission, in an effort to spread further confusion, spells the name Qathafi, and I know I've seen Gadaafi somewhere. To make matters worse, the Library of Congress and the Middle East Studies Association, to whom one would ordinarily look for guidance, have a fondness for Qadhdhafi, which is an abomination unto God. I think you now begin to grasp the dimensions of the problem.

With government, there has never been such a thing as "collective bargaining"; it's a fiction of the unions

My first experiences with bargaining came as a teenager in my first trips across the border into Mexico. When I wanted to buy a shirt or shoes in Davis, I would go to the store and pay whatever the listed price was, if I thought a store was offering a good deal. As economists would say, I was deciding that I would rather have that pair of sneakers than I would hold onto my $20 bill; and the store would rather have my $20 bill than they would that pair of sneakers. By trading the shoes for the $20, both sides were better off.

In Mexico, prices were far more pliable for just about everything. A blanket I liked might be listed at $25. But that was just a starting point. I would say to the seller, "I like this one. How about $10?" He would then look away in disgust, as if I had insulted his family's good name. When he looked away, I would start to leave, seeing that along that same street there were dozens of others selling similar goods. Two steps out, he would stop me: "Wait! Wait, Mister! I give this one for you just $20." I would stop and turn back to him and shake my head. "No, that's too much. I'll give you $10." He would then put on the sad face and exclaim, "I need to feed my children, Mister. Please. $15 is the lowest I can go." Feeling guilty, I would nod, "Okay. $15." I got the blanket for 60% of what he listed it at; and the seller was happy to make whatever profit he made. These sorts of bargaining sessions went on--and still go on--all day long in Mexican street markets.



In Wisconsin, the public employees unions are in an uproar, because the reforms of Republican Gov. Scott Walker would impair their bargaining position:

State workers and pro-labor activists have filled the streets of downtown Madison to oppose Republican Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to force many Wisconsin employees to contribute more for their healthcare and pensions and to strip them of most of their collective bargaining rights.

What the government labor unions fail to concede is that there never has been collective bargaining with them. In order to bargain, you have to have both sides fully represented, where those fighting for the interests of the taxpayers are always trying to get the best deal for the taxpayers, just as the union reps are trying to do the same for their members.

Yet the taxpayers are almost never represented. The unions give millions of dollars in campaign contributions to the politicians who are supposed to be working for all taxpayers. Then when the two sides meet at "the bargaining table," the politicians roll over to the unions. They don't just cave in; they screw over the taxpayers with giveaways which harm the long-term interests of the people who elected them.

Part of this, of course, is with the voters. They elect corrupt stooges who take union money. But ultimately, the system is rigged all on the union side. That's why they are turning out in big numbers to keep the system of phony "collective bargaining" in place.

If you question how fake these negotiations are, then answer this: Why is it that all public employees, including those fresh on the job in places like Davis, get 3 weeks of paid holidays, when the norm in the private sector is one week (or 5 days), even for senior employees? Why do public employees in mid-career, including those in low-level positions, get 4-6 weeks of paid vacation time every year, when their private sector counterparts get half that? Why are the medical benefits and pension benefits given to public sector workers worth 5 to 10 times as much as those given to their equivalents in the private sector? Why are public employees often paid by the taxpayers to attend union functions, where they learn negotiating skills to get even better deals from the taxpayers?

The answer to all of these questions is the other side: unions are not "bargaining" with people who are putting their own money, their own interests on the line. They are bargaining with people who they already bought off. It's not a fair fight. If a union runs into someone on the other side of the table who is willing to hold the line, they will work harder in the next election to make sure he is replaced by a stooge whose campaign they funded.

Think back to my bargaining experiences in Mexico. I had every incentive to buy that blanket for as little as possible. The seller had every incentive to get the highest price possible. We met in the middle. That was bargaining. But if I was buying that blanket for, say, the City of Davis, and I had nothing personally at stake in the purchase, I would have paid the full $25. Why go through the hassle of bargaining, when it's no skin off my back to waste $10 of the taxpayers' money? That's the way public employers have always bargained. That's why public employees are paid so much more than their private sector counterparts. That's why governments up and down California are going broke.

It won't affect me one way or the other what goes on in Wisconsin. However, I hope this governor breaks the unions and ends the fraudulent collective bargaining process. It would set a good precedent for our nation.

Boys should not compete against girls in combat sports

The story of Joel Northrup, a high school sophomore from Iowa who withdrew from his state's wrestling championships rather than compete against a girl, Cassy Herkelman, got a lot of media play this week.

Northrup explained that it was his religious beliefs which told him to bow out of this match.

"Wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times," Northrup said in a statement released by his high school. "As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa."

Critics of Mr. Northrup seemed to think his religious convictions led him to the wrong decision.

Speaking for myself, as a non-religious person, I think Northrup was completely right. It's insane to have boys and girls competing against each other in a violent, combative sport like wrestling.

It has little or nothing to do with the accidental touching of breasts or genitals. It has to do with the fact that in a combat sport you are literally trying to dominate your opponent with violence, something boys ought not be doing to girls, ever.



If girls want to wrestle, they should exclusively wrestle other girls. If there are not enough girls interested, then there is no reason to have female wrestling as a sport.

Outlawing drugs creates a black market and leads to police corruption

The San Jose Mercury News is reporting today that Norman Wielsch, commander of the state's Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team, or CNET, was arrested on charges "of running a narcotics-selling scheme, possibly with confiscated drugs." Also arrested by federal agents was "Chris Butler, who runs the investigative firm Butler and Associates."

Both men were booked into County Jail in Martinez on as many as 25 suspected felony offenses, including possessing, transporting and selling marijuana, methamphetamine and steroids, and embezzlement, second-degree burglary and conspiracy.

Probably most narcotics enforcement agents are on the up and up. It's not everyday one is arrested for the crimes Mr. Wielsch is accused of committing. However, it is the case that the rich profits which can be made selling drugs--due to the fact that they are not regulated and illegal--give cops a strong incentive to do so.

My guess is that there is at least one police officer on every police force for a city the size of Davis, 65,000, or larger who is corrupt, who is either stealing drugs from evidence lockers or is shaking down dealers.

Very few of these corrupt officers are ever arrested. I suspect that is so because their departments are either unwilling or unable to investigate them. Yet all the time there are stories in the news about confiscated drug evidence missing from police lockers.

In the last few days there was: 1. a story in Georgia about 2 kilos of missing cocaine; 2. a story in Broomfield, Colo. about missing drugs from their evidence room; 3. a federal lab which tests drug evidence in California missing large amounts of that drug evidence; and 4. a story from Boston where "hundreds of bags" of drug evidence is missing.

Common sense suggests, if some cops are willing to steal evidence from drug lockers after it was placed in custody, far more would just never enter that evidence in the first place. It does not seem hard to imagine that there are many police officers profitting from the drug trade by taking cash payoffs from wealthy drug dealers in exchange for not arresting them or stealing the money from them or confiscating the drugs and never reporting that confiscation.

All of these sorts of corrupt police activities were rife in the days of alcohol prohibition. There is no reason to think they are not common in our times of drug prohibition.

The answer to ridding police departments of these crimes is not just to investigate and arrest bad cops. It's also to legalize and regulate the production, distribution and sale of street drugs, which would wipe out the profits and take away the incentive for cops to be dishonest.

Death of a firefighter

Regardless of whatever political problems I have with the firefighters' union in Davis, I am fully cognizant of the fact that when they have to enter a burning building or they face a raging wildfire, theirs is a very dangerous job which takes a great amount of training and courage.

Today in Los Angeles, a firefighter who was 2 years from his scheduled retirement died in the line of duty:

A Los Angeles firefighter died Friday from injuries he sustained when a ceiling collapsed on him in a house fire late Wednesday night in the Hollywood Hills.

"I don't think any of us as firefighters would expect such a catastrophic failure of ceiling," city Fire Chief Millage Peaks said after announcing the death of Glenn Allen, 61, an L.A. firefighter for more than 36 years.

Allen, who was less than two years from retirement, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His first grandchild is expected to be born Saturday.

When Allen and dozens of other firefighters arrived at the scene, the fire was blazing across the attic of a house in the 1500 block of North Viewsite Drive.

Running through the attic were plastic pipes for fire sprinklers. The fire melted the pipes, flooding the attic and filling the insulation with water, Peaks said. The weight of the insulation appears to have led a large section of the ceiling to collapse, injuring Allen and five other firefighters.

One of the firefighters was still hospitalized Friday with a broken ankle, but the others had been treated and released, Peaks said.

When the ceiling collapsed, Allen was covered with debris. Rescuers used a chainsaw to reach him. When they found him, he was not breathing and his heart had stopped.

The newly built three-story house was 12,500 square feet, according to Peaks. The Fire Department was continuing to investigate the cause of the blaze on Friday. But officials said it seemed to have started around a fireplace, then raced up the walls to the attic and spread. A couple who had been sleeping upstairs escaped without injury.

My sincerest condolences go out to Mr. Allen's loved ones.

Egypt going forward

Hamza El-Nakhal wrote a letter to The Davis Enterprise, today, regarding the situation in Egypt, his native country.

He wrote:

I am so proud of all the defenseless Egyptian youths who stood up to the dictator and his terrorist regime for 18 days in Tahrir (Liberation) square in downtown Cairo. They endured the shutting down of communication means such as the Internet and mobile phone services, thugs on horseback, criminal drivers who plowed through the pedestrians, rock throwing, rubber and live bullets, tear gas and cocktail bombs, and freeing criminal prisoners and ordering them to cause as much chaos as possible in the civilian population.

I too feel good about the peaceful demonstrators in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. They behaved admirably. However, it should be noted that, as brutal as the Mubarak government (and the thugs within his political party) could be, that regime was tame compared to most Arab and Muslim governments. It is pure hyperbole to call Mubarak's government a "terrorist regime," when it is seen in the light of Syria, Algeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran.

Protests have spread recently to Libya. Not surprisingly, Col. Kaddafi's response was much more violent than Gen. Mubarak's was:

The severity of a Libyan crackdown on its so-called Day of Rage began to emerge Friday when a human rights advocacy group said 24 people had been killed by gunfire on Thursday and news reports said further clashes with security forces were feared at the funerals for the dead.

A later report from the AP says 84 have been killed by Col. Kaddafi's goons.



Mr. El-Nakhal adds that, "Egyptians lived under the iron fist of that regime for almost 30 years." That is true. But it's not the case that before Mubarak Egyptians had legitimately elected or liberal governments. Nasser and Sadat were, like Mubarak, military leaders who became dictators. Before them, Egypt had a king in power.

While Mubarak was no more democratic than his predecessors, he was no less. And in fact, Mubarak had started to liberalize their socialist economy. That liberalization led to the creation of new industry in Egypt, and its byproduct was a rising economy and a new middle class. The protestors in Tahrir Square were not peasants. Nor were most of them workers in Egypt's socialist enterprises. A great percentage of them were educated, middle class people whose fortunes were improved by the liberalization.

I hope the coming elections will be democratic. I have a small wager that they will be. However, because of the widespread illiteracy and bad education in Egypt, the ubiquitous poverty--the L.A. Times reports that about 40% of Egyptians live on $2 a day or less--and the lack of a tradition of democratic governance and the troubling influence of Muslim extremists, I don't have a lot of hope for much democracy after the elections.

One problem is that the military in Egypt is an independent entity which wants to end liberalization and return to the socialist ways which were adopted in the 1950s when Soviet planners directed the Egyptian economy:

The Egyptian military defends the country, but it also runs day care centers and beach resorts. Its divisions make television sets, jeeps, washing machines, wooden furniture and olive oil, as well as bottled water under a brand reportedly named after a general’s daughter, Safi.

From this vast web of businesses, the military pays no taxes, employs conscripted labor, buys public land on favorable terms and discloses nothing to Parliament or the public. ...

Field Marshal Tantawi, the defense minister, and other senior officers were all commissioned before Mr. Sadat switched Egypt’s allegiance to the West in 1979. They trained in the former Soviet Union, where sprawling business empires under military control were not uncommon. ...

(American ambassador to Egypt), Margaret Scobey, wrote of the plans for economic liberalization: “The military views the (government owned enterprise's) privatization efforts as a threat to its economic position, and therefore generally opposes economic reforms. We see the military’s role in the economy as a force that generally stifles free market reform by increasing direct government involvement in the markets.”

One probable political change in the next year, whether there are democratic elections or not, is that Egypt will become more socialist in its economy. The trend toward liberalization will end. And many of those protestors who helped to topple Mubarak will be disemployed as their new industries are shut down and replaced by government companies under the control of the military.

Socialism is not compatible with democracy. A stagnant, uncompetitive economy is not compatible with democracy. A military in charge of an economy is not compatible with democracy. In the end, it looks very unlikely that Egypt will soon be a truly free, democratic country.

Davis City Council -- selecting a new member

Here is my take on the odds of each of the 10 candidates being selected:

Dan Wolk--31.35%
Kari Fry--27.40%
Sherelene Harrison--10.67%
Kerry Loux--10.03%
Walter Bunter, Jr.--6.55%
Steve Williams--4.93%
Linda Parfitt--2.76%
Paul Boylan--2.59%
Vincent Wyatt--1.98%
Robert Smith--1.75%

EDIT: After watching the LWV's forum--which can be viewed here--two candidates stood out to me as much stronger than they did in their videos recorded with Davis Media Access. Those two were Steve Williams and Paul Boylan. I don't mean that to demean the performances of any of the others. Williams and Boylan came across as confident, informed and having a sense what the four members of the council should be looking for in a new colleague.

Target Map

Conaway Map

This is an aerial map of Conaway Ranch:

Davis RDA Map

PHEV

Legalize it

Trex

Miss Iowa

Understanding Regis Philbin, but still not liking sea cucumbers

One of the joys of writing a column is getting letters from my readers. After I explained what a boring sport soccer is, I got this entertaining missive from a reader named Mayra. Here is my reply:

Hi Mayra,

Nice to hear from you.

You begin:

“okay you are out of your mind!!! your article really offended me! i cant believe someone would let you actually write this article about soccer!!”

They only let me out of the psychiatric ward to write my column occasionally.

“many people love soccer!! if basketball, baseball and football are so much better, how come they dont have a world cup??!”

I’ll be sure to explain to the Yankees that there really is no such thing as the World Series.

You continue:

“… you know why?? because only americans think that these sports are cool. i think football, baseball, and basketball are really boring!!”

Everyone has his or her own tastes and or opinions. That’s why Regis Philbin has a career on TV.

“your so called "tips" are useless. making the goals bigger will be way too easy to score goals from even half of the field!!”

I’ve never thought scoring was such a terrible thing. Perhaps that’s where I went wrong.

“soccer is more intense because its non-stop except for half time.”

Of course, it’s also non-start.

“in soccer you have to be really good to score a goal. and in basketball pretty much anyone could score, not much skill in that.”

I’ll tell Kobe Bryant that the next time I run into him.

“also in soccer when you score one goal it counts as one point no matter where the person scores it from. and in basketball one score could be like 2 or 3 points which is pretty lame to me. why cant it just be one point?!”

You make a very good point. Shakespeare wrote tragedies about lesser crises than the three-point field goal.

“also in football one touchdown would be 6 points, why so much for one touchdown?!”

Maybe because it’s six times as exciting as a soccer goal?

“the u.s. game vs. nigeria was really suspense, even though it was only one goal it was worth it.”

I won’t let the Algerians know you called them Nigerians. Wars have begun over lesser slights.

“what really sucks is that the u.s. soccer team doesn't get enough support from people like you.”

If they would let me off the psych ward more often, I might be a greater athletic supporter.

“people should support the team because they are playing internationally and it takes hard work competing against other countries.”

Fortunately, we have a very good military. So if they beat us on the field, we can send in the Marines.

“who ever wins the world cup, they are the best in the world not just in the nation.”

That is hard to argue with.

“soccer is a fun and an exciting sport, you should try it first before criticizing.”

I tried sea cucumber once at a Chinese restaurant. I didn’t care for it, either.

“support the u.s. this saturday against ghana.”

And miss the Davis Farmer’s Market?

All the best,

Your good friend,

Rich