The people of the Middle East are pulling off one of the most amazing feats in human history, toppling a seemingly impregnable series of corrupt, bloodthirsty neoliberal dictatorships with record speed. It took a month for Tunisians to send Ben-Ali packing, and it took 21 days for the people of Egypt to topple Mubarak.
Now Libya has picked up the pace. Within a single week, the people of Libya have risen up against Qaddafi's neoliberal gangster-ocracy. It started with three days of horrifying state repression against peaceful demonstrators, but it didn't end there. Inspired by the examples of Tunisia and Egypt, the eastern cities rose up and threw off their chains. Knowing full well that the rebellion would be crushed if it remained local, activists creatively refunctioned Libya's limited social media networks, spreading the sparks of rebellion to the rest of Libya. The regime's only response was to broadcast some the most bone-crushingly idiotic and patently absurd state propaganda ever emitted by a dying autocracy, while unleashing foreign mercenaries to murder its citizens en masse. This brutality has allowed it to retain limited control over parts of Tripoli, but has only served to enrage ordinary Libyans. Pro-democracy militias and army units are now converging on the city for the final showdown.
The city of Benghazi, epicenter of the eastern rebellion, has been running the only live video feed currently available from the country. The Revolution Cam just ran its first webcast, an improvised pre-Qaddafi flag (red, black and green) prominent in the background -- the insignia which will undoubtedly become the official symbol of the free, democratic Libya of the future:
http://www.livestream.com/libya17feb
The best source of news:
http://feb17.info/
Robert Fisk weighs in on the approaching end:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/tripoli-a-city-in-the-shadow-of-death-2223977.html
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