on the edge of something

Check Santa Clause Out

2011-12-21T07:28:00.000+02:00

Tis the season for the wonder that little ones have for Santa and Christmas .I found this sight by Google that allows you to send a video or a phone call from Santa to your special little one this Christmas for free , the only catch is you must live in the USA .Check it out here .Imagine how exciting it would be to get a phone call from Santa .
When my children were little we live in the USA and on every Christmas eve we would go Christmas light looking by driving through different neighborhood decorated with Christmas lights , listening to the radio station announcing Santa's progress on his Christmas night flight to deliver toys to good little children . He was being tracked by NORAD on his trip across the USA. NORAD has a special program that allows you and your children to follow his trip . The sight even has some games for the kids to play. This will be available until Dec.25th. This is really neat way for the kids to see where Santa is when they ask you for his location you can check it together here.

Militias Wield Real Power On Libya's Streets

2011-12-20T05:59:00.000+02:00

Militias wield real power on Libya's streets

December 19 2011 at 09:23pm
By Reuters

Reuters

Libya's Defence Minister Osama Al-Juwali speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli on Monday.

Tripoli - It will take weeks to rid Libya's streets of the militias that ousted Muammar Gaddafi, and months to form an army fit to take their place, Defence Minister Osama Al-Juwali said on Monday.

His comments signalled a rift with others in Libya's interim leadership who have called repeatedly for the heavily-armed militias that swept into Tripoli in August to quit the capital and set them a deadline of the end of this month.

“I think this issue will be resolved in a month-and-a-half, approximately. I'm not setting any deadlines,” Al-Juwali said in an interview with Reuters.

Two months after Gaddafi was captured and killed, real power resides with the militias that ousted him and have since carved up the country and capital into competing fiefdoms, each holding out for the share of power they say they are owed.

Turf wars risk spiralling out of control.

Al-Juwali was endorsed by Libya's National Transitional Council as defence minister in November, thanks largely to the clout wielded by the rebels he commanded in the western mountain town of Zintan.

The Zintan fighters played a major role in the fall of Tripoli. They now control the international airport and the fate of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the ousted leader's most prominent son, who was captured by Zintan fighters on November 19.

Without a fully-functioning army or police, Libya's interim government is struggling to stamp its authority on the oil-producing North African country.

Senior officials, including commanders of the nascent army, have called on the gun-toting militias to return to their homes, and the council in Tripoli has set a deadline of end-December.

Zintan fighters have already fought gun battles with the commander of Libyan ground forces and his sons. The army spokesman blamed “rogue militias” and said they would “clear the city of weapons.”

But Al-Juwali conveyed no sense of urgency. He said the government was working on a plan, but provided few specifics.

“There is a general plan to bring the fighters in,” he said.

“Part of them will join the defence ministry, others the interior ministry. There is another plan at the Ministry of Labour to rehabilitate and train these fighters, and I think this plan will be approved soon.”

He spoke in the offices he shares with Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib.

Zintan fighters filled the corridors. The man who piloted the Antonov that brought Saif from the desert where he was caught to his cell in Zintan had swapped his green flight fatigues for a sharp, black suit.

“I think the army will be ready to take on its responsibilities before the end of the transitional government,” said Al-Juwali. The interim government is due to rule until an election mid-next year.

Al-Juwali said the government was analysing the needs of the national army and what hardware it might seek from abroad. He mentioned military transport planes, specifically US-made C-130 transport aircraft.

In the meantime, the Western powers behind the NATO air war against Gaddafi's forces are pressing for the weapons that swept through the country to be secured and accounted for, fearing they might fall into the hands of radical Islamists.

“Libya could enter the Guiness Book of World Records, it has so many weapons,” Al-Juwali said. “By the time this government ends, we will have the weapons under control and in safe places, and the revolutionaries (former rebel fighters) will help collect them.” - Reuters

Let It Snow !

2011-12-20T05:19:00.000+02:00

This is for those of you that don't have snow , try it out . It works !

In Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll

2011-12-19T02:21:00.001+02:00

NATO bombings, with the alliance countries, played a pivotal part in liberating Libya from Ghadaffy and his government No one can argue that .Most Libyans will say so themselves with a huge thank you directed toward NATO and her allies that helped in the air bombing campaign .But at a precious price, as there were some civilian causalities .The official account by NATO and the Libyan government is deliberately down played, much to the dismay by many of the injured parties involved .Victims want answers to their questions , so far not too many are being given to the satisfaction of the people involved.I found this report by C.J.Chivers and Eric Schmitt for The New York Times discussing their findings from their investigation into the matter very informative.

In Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

When NATO bombs hit an apartment building in Surt, Libya, on Sept. 16, Mahmoud Zarog Massoud's wife was killed. More Photos »

By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: Deember 17, 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO’s seven-month air campaign in Libya, hailed by the alliance and many Libyans for blunting a lethal crackdown by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and helping to push him from power, came with an unrecognized toll: scores of civilian casualties the alliance has long refused to acknowledge or investigate.

Multimedia

Interactive

Errant NATO Airstrikes in Libya: 13 Cases

Photographs

The Civilian Toll in Libya

NATO Airstrikes in Libya

By NATO’s telling during the war, and in statements since sorties ended on Oct. 31, the alliance-led operation was nearly flawless — a model air war that used high technology, meticulous planning and restraint to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, which was the alliance’s mandate.
“We have carried out this operation very carefully, without confirmed civilian casualties,” the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in November.
But an on-the-ground examination by The New York Times of airstrike sites across Libya — including interviews with survivors, doctors and witnesses, and the collection of munitions remnants, medical reports, death certificates and photographs — found credible accounts of dozens of civilians killed by NATO in many distinct attacks. The victims, including at least 29 women or children, often had been asleep in homes when the ordnance hit.
In all, at least 40 civilians, and perhaps more than 70, were killed by NATO at these sites, available evidence suggests. While that total is not high compared with other conflicts in which Western powers have relied heavily on air power, and less than the exaggerated accounts circulated by the Qaddafi government, it is also not a complete accounting. Survivors and doctors working for the anti-Qaddafi interim authorities point to dozens more civilians wounded in these and other strikes, and they referred reporters to other sites where civilian casualties were suspected.
Two weeks after being provided a 27-page memorandum from The Times containing extensive details of nine separate attacks in which evidence indicated that allied planes had killed or wounded unintended victims, NATO modified its stance.
“From what you have gathered on the ground, it appears that innocent civilians may have been killed or injured, despite all the care and precision,” said Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO headquarters in Brussels. “We deeply regret any loss of life.”
She added that NATO was in regular contact with the new Libyan government and that “we stand ready to work with the Libyan authorities to do what they feel is right.”
NATO, however, deferred the responsibility of initiating any inquiry to Libya’s interim authorities, whose survival and climb to power were made possible largely by the airstrike campaign. So far, Libyan leaders have expressed no interest in examining NATO’s mistakes.
The failure to thoroughly assess the civilian toll reduces the chances that allied forces, which are relying ever more heavily on air power rather than risking ground troops in overseas conflicts, will examine their Libyan experience to minimize collateral deaths elsewhere. Allied commanders have been ordered to submit a lessons-learned report to NATO headquarters in February. NATO’s incuriosity about the many lethal accidents raises questions about how thorough that review will be.
NATO’s experience in Libya also reveals an attitude that initially prevailed in Afghanistan. There, NATO forces, led by the United States, tightened the rules of engagement for airstrikes and insisted on better targeting to reduce civilian deaths only after repeatedly ignoring or disputing accounts of airstrikes that left many civilians dead.
In Libya, NATO’s inattention to its unintended victims has also left many wounded civilians with little aid in the aftermath of the country’s still-chaotic change in leadership.
These victims include a boy blasted by debris in his face and right eye, a woman whose left leg was amputated, another whose foot and leg wounds left her disabled, a North Korean doctor whose left foot was crushed and his wife, who suffered a fractured skull.
The Times’s investigation included visits to more than 25 sites, including in Tripoli, Surman, Mizdah, Zlitan, Ga’a, Majer, Ajdabiya, Misurata, Surt, Brega and Sabratha and near Benghazi. More than 150 targets — bunkers, buildings or vehicles — were hit at these places.
NATO warplanes flew thousands of sorties that dropped 7,700 bombs or missiles; because The Times did not examine sites in several cities and towns where the air campaign was active, the casualty estimate could be low.
There are indications that the alliance took many steps to avoid harming civilians, and often did not damage civilian infrastructure useful to Colonel Qaddafi’s military. Elements of two American-led air campaigns in Iraq, in 1991 and 2003, appear to have been avoided, including attacks on electrical grids.
Such steps spared civilians certain hardships and risks that accompanied previous Western air-to-ground operations. NATO also said that allied forces did not use cluster munitions or ordnance containing depleted uranium, both of which pose health and environmental risks, in Libya at any time.
The alliance’s fixed-wing aircraft dropped only laser- or satellite-guided weapons, said Col. Gregory Julian, a NATO spokesman; no so-called dumb bombs were used.
While the overwhelming preponderance of strikes seemed to have hit their targets without killing noncombatants, many factors contributed to a run of fatal mistakes. These included a technically faulty bomb, poor or dated intelligence and the near absence of experienced military personnel on the ground who could help direct airstrikes.
The alliance’s apparent presumption that residences thought to harbor pro-Qaddafi forces were not occupied by civilians repeatedly proved mistaken, the evidence suggests, posing a reminder to advocates of air power that no war is cost- or error-free.
The investigation also found significant damage to civilian infrastructure from certain attacks for which a rationale was not evident or risks to civilians were clear. These included strikes on warehouses that current anti-Qaddafi guards said contained only food, or near businesses or homes that were destroyed, including an attack on a munitions bunker beside a neighborhood that caused a large secondary explosion, scattering warheads and toxic rocket fuel.
NATO has also not yet provided data to Libyans on the locations or types of unexploded ordnance from its strikes. At least two large weapons were present at sites visited by The Times. “This information is urgently needed,” said Dr. Ali Yahwya, chief surgeon at the Zlitan hospital.
Moreover, the scouring of one strike site found remnants of NATO munitions in a ruined building that an alliance spokesman explicitly said NATO did not attack.
That mistake — a pair of strikes — killed 12 anti-Qaddafi fighters and nearly killed a civilian ambulance crew aiding wounded men. It underscored NATO’s sometimes tenuous grasp of battle lines and raised questions about the forthrightness and accuracy of the alliance’s public-relations campaign.
The second strike pointed to a tactic that survivors at several sites recounted: warplanes restriking targets minutes after a first attack, a practice that imperiled, and sometimes killed, civilians rushing to the wounded.
Pressed about the dangers posed to noncombatants by such attacks, NATO said it would reconsider the tactic’s rationale in its internal campaign review. “That’s a valid point to take into consideration in future operations,” Colonel Julian said.
That statement is a shift in the alliance’s stance. NATO’s response to allegations of mistaken attacks had long been carefully worded denials and insistence that its operations were devised and supervised with exceptional care. Faced with credible allegations that it killed civilians, the alliance said it had neither the capacity for nor intention of investigating and often repeated that disputed strikes were sound.
The alliance maintained this position even after two independent Western organizations — Human Rights Watch and the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, or Civic — met privately with NATO officials and shared field research about mistakes, including, in some cases, victims’ names and the dates and locations where they died.
Organizations researching civilian deaths in Libya said that the alliance’s resistance to making itself accountable and acknowledging mistakes amounted to poor public policy. “It’s crystal clear that civilians died in NATO strikes,” said Fred Abrahams, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “But this whole campaign is shrouded by an atmosphere of impunity” and by NATO’s and the Libyan authorities’ mutually congratulatory statements.
Mr. Abrahams added that the matter went beyond the need to assist civilians harmed by airstrikes, though he said that was important. At issue, he said, was “who is going to lose their lives in the next campaign because these errors and mistakes went unexamined, and no one learned from them?”
Human Rights Watch and Civic also noted that the alliance’s stance on civilian casualties it caused in Libya was at odds with its practices for so-called collateral damage in Afghanistan. There, public anger and political tension over fatal mistakes led NATO to adopt policies for investigating actions that caused civilian harm, including guidelines for expressing condolences and making small payments to victims or their families.
“You would think, and I did think, that all of the lessons learned from Afghanistan would have been transferred to Libya,” said Sarah Holewinski, the executive director of Civic, which helped NATO devise its practices for Afghanistan. “But many of them didn’t.”
Choosing Targets
When foreign militaries began attacking Libya’s loyalists on March 19, the United States military, more experienced than NATO at directing large operations, coordinated the campaign. On March 31, the Americans transferred command to NATO.
Seven months later, the alliance had destroyed more than 5,900 military targets by means of roughly 9,700 strike sorties, according to its data, helping to dismantle the pro-Qaddafi military and militias. Warplanes from France, Britain, the United States, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Canada dropped ordnance. Two non-NATO nations, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, participated on a small scale.
France carried out about a third of all strike sorties, Britain 21 percent and the United States 19 percent, according to data from each nation.
The attacks fell under two broad categories. So-called deliberate strikes were directed against fixed targets, like buildings or air-defense systems. These targets were selected and assigned to pilots before aircraft took off.
Deliberate strikes were planned to minimize risks to civilians, NATO said. In Naples, Italy, intelligence analysts and targeting specialists vetted proposed targets and compiled lists, which were sent to an operations center near Bologna, where targets were matched to specific aircraft and weapons.
For some targets, like command bunkers, NATO said, it conducted long periods of surveillance first. Drones or other aircraft chronicled the daily routines at the sites, known as “patterns of life,” until commanders felt confident that each target was valid.
Other considerations then came into play. Targeting specialists chose, for example, the angle of attack and time of day thought to pose the least risk to civilians. They would also consider questions of ordnance. These included the size and type of bomb, and its fuze.
Some fuzes briefly delay detonation of a bomb’s high-explosive charge. This can allow ordnance to penetrate concrete and explode in an underground tunnel or bunker, or, alternately, to burrow into sand before exploding — reducing the blast wave, shrapnel and risk to people and property nearby.
(NATO could also choose inert bombs, made of concrete, that can collapse buildings or shatter tanks with kinetic energy rather than an explosion. NATO said such weapons were used fewer than 10 times in the war.)
Many early strikes were planned missions. But about two-thirds of all strikes, and most of the attacks late in the war, were another sort: dynamic strikes.
Dynamic strikes were against targets of opportunity. Crews on aerial patrols would spot or be told of a potential target, like suspected military vehicles. Then, if cleared by controllers in Awacs aircraft, they would attack.
NATO said dynamic missions, too, were guided by practices meant to limit risks. On Oct. 24, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard of Canada, the operation’s commander, described a philosophy beyond careful target vetting or using only guided weapons: restraint. “Only when we had a clear shot would we take it,” he said.
Colonel Julian, the spokesman, said there were hundreds of instances when pilots could have released ordnance but because of concerns for civilians they held fire. Col. Alain Pelletier, commander of seven Canadian CF-18 fighters that flew 946 strike sorties, said Canada installed a special computer software modification in its planes that allowed pilots to assess the likely blast radius around an intended target and to call off strikes if the technology warned they posed too great a risk to civilians.
Colonel Julian also said that NATO broadcast radio messages and that it dropped millions of leaflets to warn Libyans to stay away from likely military targets, a practice Libyan citizens across much of the country confirmed.
A Blow to the Rebels
Civilians were killed by NATO within days of the alliance’s intervention, the available evidence shows, beginning with one of the uglier mistakes of the air war: the pummeling of a secret rebel armored convoy that was advancing through the desert toward the Qaddafi forces’ eastern front lines.
Having survived the first wave of air-to-ground attacks, the loyalists were taking steps to avoid attracting NATO bombs. They moved in smaller formations and sometimes set aside armored vehicles in favor of pickup trucks resembling those that rebels drove. Pilots suddenly had fewer targets.
On April 7, as the rebel armor lined up on a hill about 20 miles from Brega, NATO aircraft struck. In a series of attacks, laser-guided bombs stopped the formation, destroyed the rebels’ armor and scattered the anti-Qaddafi fighters, killing several of them, survivors said.
The attack continued as civilians, including ambulance crews, tried to converge on the craters and flames to aid the wounded. Three shepherds were among them.
As the shepherds approached over the sand, a bomb slammed in again, said one of them, Abdul Rahman Ali Suleiman Sudani. The blast knocked them over, he said. His two cousins were hit.
One, he said, was cut in half; the other had a gaping chest wound. Both died. Mr. Sudani and other relatives returned to the wreckage later and retrieved the remains for burial in Kufra. The men had died, he said, trying to help.
“We called their families in Sudan and told them, ‘Your sons, they have passed away,’ ” he said.
Colonel Julian declined to discuss this episode but said that each time NATO aircraft returned to strike again was a distinct event and a distinct decision, and that it was not a general practice for NATO to “double tap” its targets.
This practice was reported several times by survivors at separate attacks and cited to explain why some civilians opted not to help at strike sites or bolted in fear soon after they did.
Colonel Julian said the tactic was likely to be included in NATO’s internal review of the air campaign.
An Errant Strike
NATO’s planning or restraint did not protect the family of Ali Mukhar al-Gharari when his home was shattered in June by a phenomenon as old as air-to-ground war: errant ordnance.
A retiree in Tripoli, Mr. Gharari owned a three-story house he shared with his adult children and their families. Late on June 19 a bomb struck it squarely, collapsing the front side. The rubble buried a courtyard apartment, the family said, where Karima, Mr. Gharari’s adult daughter, lived with her husband and two children, Jomana, 2, and Khaled, 7 months.
All four were killed, as was another of Mr. Gharari’s adult children, Faruj, who was blasted from his second-floor bed to the rubble below, two of his brothers said. Eight other family members were wounded, one seriously.
The Qaddafi government, given to exaggeration, claimed that nine civilians died in the airstrike, including a rescue worker electrocuted while clearing rubble. These deaths have not been independently corroborated. There has been no dispute about the Gharari deaths.
Initially, NATO almost acknowledged its mistake. “A military missile site was the intended target,” an alliance statement said soon after. “There may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties.”
Then it backtracked. Kristele Younes, director of field operations for Civic, the victims’ group, examined the site and delivered her findings to NATO. She met a cold response. “They said, ‘We have no confirmed reports of civilian casualties,’ ” Ms. Younes said.
The reason, she said, was that the alliance had created its own definition for “confirmed”: only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed. But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations, its casualty tally by definition could not budge — from zero.
“The position was absurd,” Ms. Younes said. “But they made it very clear: there was no appetite within NATO to look at these incidents.”
The position left the Gharari family disoriented, and in social jeopardy. Another of Mr. Gharari’s sons, Mohammed, said the family supported the revolution. But since NATO’s attack, other Libyans have labeled the family pro-Qaddafi. If NATO attacked the Ghararis’ home, the street logic went, the alliance must have had a reason.
Mohammed al-Gharari said he would accept an apology from NATO. He said he could even accept the mistake. “If this was an error from their control room, I will not say anything harsh, because that was our destiny,” he said.
But he asked that NATO lift the dishonor from the family and set the record straight. “NATO should tell the truth,” he said. “They should tell what happened, so everyone knows our family is innocent.”
A ‘Horrible Mistake’
In the hours before his wife and two of their sons were killed, on Aug. 4, Mustafa Naji al-Morabit thought he had taken adequate precautions.
When Colonel Qaddafi’s officers began meeting at a home next door in Zlitan, he moved his family. That was in July. The adjacent property, Mr. Morabit and his neighbors said, was owned by a loyalist doctor who hosted commanders who organized the local front.
About a month later, as rebels pressed near, the officers fled, Mr. Morabit said. He and his family returned home on Aug. 2, assuming that the danger had passed.
Calamity struck two days later. A bomb roared down in the early morning quiet and slammed into their concrete home, causing its front to buckle.
Mr. Morabit’s wife, Eptisam Ali al-Barbar, died of a crushed skull. Two of their three sons — Mohammed, 6, and Moataz, 3 — were killed, too. Three toes on the left foot of Fatima Umar Mansour, Mr. Morabit’s mother, were severed. Her lower left leg was snapped.
“We were just in our homes at night,” she said, showing the swollen leg.
The destruction of their home showed that even with careful standards for target selection, mistakes occurred. Not only did NATO hit the wrong building, survivors and neighbors said, but it also hit it more than two days late.
Mr. Morabit added a sorrowful detail. He suspected that the bomb was made of concrete; there seemed to be no fire or explosion when it struck, he said. NATO may have tried to minimize damage, he added, but the would-be benefits of its caution were lost. “I want to know why,” he said. “NATO said they are so organized, that they are specialists. So why? Why this horrible mistake?”
It is not clear whether the mistake was made by the pilot or those who selected the target. NATO declined to answer questions about the strike.
On Aug. 8, four days after destroying the Morabit home, NATO hit buildings occupied by civilians again, this time in Majer, according to survivors, doctors and independent investigators. The strikes were NATO’s bloodiest known accidents in the war.
The attack began with a series of 500-pound laser-guided bombs, called GBU-12s, ordnance remnants suggest. The first house, owned by Ali Hamid Gafez, 61, was crowded with Mr. Gafez’s relatives, who had been dislocated by the war, he and his neighbors said.
The bomb destroyed the second floor and much of the first. Five women and seven children were killed; several more people were wounded, including Mr. Gafez’s wife, whose her lower left leg had to be amputated, the doctor who performed the procedure said.
Minutes later, NATO aircraft attacked two buildings in a second compound, owned by brothers in the Jarud family. Four people were killed, the family said.
Several minutes after the first strikes, as neighbors rushed to dig for victims, another bomb struck. The blast killed 18 civilians, both families said.
The death toll has been a source of confusion. The Qaddafi government said 85 civilians died. That claim does not seem to be credible. With the Qaddafi propaganda machine now gone, an official list of dead, issued by the new government, includes 35 victims, among them the late-term fetus of a fatally wounded woman the Gafez family said went into labor as she died.
The Zlitan hospital confirmed 34 deaths. Five doctors there also told of treating dozens of wounded people, including many women and children.
All 16 beds in the intensive-care unit were filled with severely wounded civilians, doctors said. Dr. Ahmad Thoboot, the hospital’s co-director, said none of the victims, alive or dead, were in uniform. “There is no doubt,” he said. “This is not fabricated. Civilians were killed.”
Descriptions of the wounds underscored the difference between mistakes with typical ground-to-ground arms and the unforgiving nature of mistakes with 500-pound bombs, which create blast waves of an entirely different order.
Dr. Mustafa Ekhial, a surgeon, said the wounds caused by NATO’s bombs were far worse than those the staff had treated for months. “We have to tell the truth,” he said. “What we saw that night was completely different.”
In previous statements, NATO said it watched the homes carefully before attacking and saw “military staging areas.” It also said that it reviewed the strikes and that claims of civilian casualties were not corroborated by “available factual information.” When asked what this information was, the alliance did not provide it.
Mr. Gafez issued a challenge. An independent review of all prestrike surveillance video, he said, would prove NATO wrong. Only civilians were there, he said, and he demanded that the alliance release the video.
Ms. Younes said the dispute missed an essential point. Under NATO’s targeting guidelines and in keeping with practices the alliance has repeatedly insisted that it followed, she said, if civilians were present, aircraft should not have attacked.
The initial findings on the Majer strikes, part of the United Nations’ investigation into actions by all sides in Libya that harmed civilians, have raised questions about the legality of the attack under international humanitarian law, according to an official familiar with the investigation.
Homes as Targets
NATO’s strikes in Majer, one of five known attacks on apparently occupied residences, suggested a pattern. When residential targets were presumed to be used by loyalist forces, civilians were sometimes present — suggesting holes in NATO’s “pattern of life” reviews and other forms of vetting.
Airstrikes on June 20 in Surman leveled homes owned by Maj. Gen. El-Khweldi el-Hamedi, a longtime confidant of Colonel Qaddafi and a member of his Revolutionary Council. NATO has said the family compound was used as command center.
The family’s account, partly confirmed by rebels, claimed that the strikes killed 13 civilians and wounded six more. Local anti-Qaddafi fighters corroborated the deaths of four of those killed — one of the general’s daughters-in-law and three of her children.
General Hamedi was wounded and has taken refuge in Morocco, said his son Khaled. Khaled has filed a lawsuit against NATO, claiming that the attack was a crime. He said that he and his family were victims of rebel “fabrications,” which attracted NATO bombs.
On Sept. 25, a smaller but similar attack destroyed the residence of Brig. Gen. Musbah Diyab in Surt, neighbors and his family members said.
General Diyab, a distant cousin of Colonel Qaddafi, was killed. So were seven women and children who crowded into his home as rebels besieged the defenses of some of the Qaddafi loyalists’ last holdouts, witnesses said.
By this time, tables in Libya had turned. The remaining loyalists held almost no territory. They were a dwindling, disorganized lot. It was the anti-Qaddafi forces who endangered civilians they suspected of having sympathies for the dying government, residents of Surt said.
On a recent afternoon, Mahmoud Zarog Massoud, his hand swollen with an infection from a wound, wandered the broken shell of a seven-story apartment building in Surt, which was struck in mid-September. His apartment furniture had been blown about by the blast.
He approached the kitchen, where, he said, he and his wife had just broken their Ramadan fast when ordnance hit. “We were not thinking NATO would attack our home,” he said.
Judging by the damage and munitions’ remains, a bomb with a delayed fuze struck another wing of the building, burrowed into another apartment and exploded, blasting walls outward. Debris flew across the courtyard and through his kitchen’s balcony door.
His wife, Aisha Abdujodil, was killed, both her arms severed, he said. Bloodstains still marked the floor and walls.
Provided written questions, NATO declined to comment on the three strikes on homes in Surman and Surt.

C. J. Chivers reported from Libya, and Eric Schmitt from Washington, Brussels and Naples, Italy.

America , The Newest Military State ?

2011-12-17T06:23:00.000+02:00

America, the newest military state in the world? With a new security law enacted ,not vetoed by President Obama, that in essences allows a USA citizen to be arrested on US soil , detained , sent to Guantanamo Bay prison for ever if so desired, by the military , all with out a trial. Well , there goes the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights out the window! I mean who needs them? Look out all third world countries , there's a new kid in town.Human rights are a thing of the past it would seem .

In an article by Chris McGreal for the Guardian, he quotes Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch as saying : "It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."

Glen Greewald reporting for Salon writes in his article Three Myths About The Detention Bill : " The most important point on this issue is the same as underscored in the prior two points: the “compromise” reached by Congress includes language preserving the status quo. That’s because the Obama administration already argues that the original 2001 AUMF authorizes them to act against U.S. citizens (obviously, if they believe they have the power to target U.S. citizens for assassination, then they believe they have the power to detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants). The proof that this bill does not expressly exempt U.S. citizens or those captured on U.S. soil is that amendments offered by Sen. Feinstein providing expressly for those exemptions were rejected. The “compromise” was to preserve the status quo by including the provision that the bill is not intended to alter it with regard to American citizens, but that’s because proponents of broad detention powers are confident that the status quo already permits such detention."

It would appear that a USA citizen may be arrested anywhere in the world , no questions asked , put into prison , no trail ,and there isn't a thing anyone can do about it now. Possibly assassinated without question. Imagine that. Khadaffy did that and he is dead now. Al Jazerra's D. Parvaz explains things a little clearer in their report on this new bill .His examples will clarify things for you best.

Americans can say this is for our national defense, our national security, and yes this would , could, be correct, but if you start down this road , what next? Cancellation of the Constitution because it is not relevant in today's environment? After all when it was written way back when 1787 , they didn't have AlQaeda or the Taliban did they?

In the 1960's there was a proliferation of world wide terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against not just Americans , but most of the worlds citizens in countries all around the world. Groups like : The Weathermen or The Weather Underground ,Red Army Faction that was a German militant group , not to be confused with the Japaneses Red Army which was a communist terrorist group, and last but not least the infamous Irish Red Army otherwise known as the IRA.But no one thought it necessary to abandon the USA Constitution or the Bill Of Rights , law and order, to fight against them .

Why are things so different now? Because of 9-11 happening on American soil? So close to home .So scary.People were murdered by those other groups , Americans among them .It was just being done in someone else back yard, so to speak , not ours.Now it is Very Personal .So, to hell with all those things that the founders of America thought was a good ideal ,the things we propose to others that are so important to make a free, just society .We are under attack and we are not taking this lying down. We will use whatever means or force it takes to justify our actions in doing so.While we preach to other nations to do as we say and not as we do.

I, as a American , proud to be so , am so alarmed with the direction my country is moving towards.I always took great pride in being an American; knowing we had a justice system in place that was the envy of the world. One the was fair to all .A person accused of a crime had a fighting chance to defend themselves against their accuser by a jury of their peers in a court of law.That is no longer true. A Sad , dark time ahead for America and Americans .

Rumors, PTSD, And Paranoia, Or Life In Libya

2011-12-12T06:09:00.000+02:00

I am hearing voices , but they are not in my head .I hear that the phones in Libya are censored again as when Gadaffi was in control . Ok , so that is sorta per normal these days for most countries including the USA and Great Britten . When asked about it the standard answer is security against the bad guys.I guess Libya has plenty of those these days , what with Gadaffi supporters still at large causing trouble for the country just to name one group and I am sure there are many more .But on the side of paranoia , I won't go into that !

I am told that the computer and all that entails is censored as well . That stands to reason also since the revolution started and was sustained by social media on the internet.Actually this is the only way we in Libya have of finding out what is going on in the country . Like today , yesterday and the day before, there were rumors floating around like crazy that the militiamen from Zintan that are in control of the Tripoli International Airport had stared a war . By going on the internet I was able to learn the truth of the matter .

The past two days there was a conference on media in Doha for Libyans. This is something that is badly needed here in Libya, a free press and media that is allowed to cover everything that is the news. The Libyan people are tired of rumors, they want the truth and the facts of what is going on .They would like some entertainment that is suitable for families to watch together on TV, but isn't so bland it will put you to sleep. Nor so old your grand mother watched it back in her day .It would be so nice to have another TV channel in English as well such as the Dubai One channel or the numerous MBC channels that are mostly in English. TV channels of quality one might have maybe in America , but not too racy.

This brings me around to health care here in Libya. So much has already been said of what is lacking here in Libya in the maters of health care services from maternity to mental , dental to surgery.Clinics and hospitals were down to the absolute basics in providing care before the war are now completely stripped of everything from meds to supplies needed to care for the patient . The war has introduced wounds never dealt with until now. Doctors dealing with gunshot and other weapons related inflicted wounds that they were not trained to treat have been coping the very best they can with the little they have.There will be a seminar for just this sort of thing this coming week , to train over a 100 doctors organized by the INRC and the Libyan Ministry of Health . This will be a big help for many of these young doctors .

There should also be something for mental health care for the many that are suffering from PTSD which is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder .It can vary from debilitating to mild discomfort with situations that arise in daily life.I suffer from it to a degree when I see a helicopter or a tank . I feel a little panicky when the helicopters fly over head here in Tagura. I KNOW there is trouble somewhere . Generally I am correct in believing this, as the rumors will verify ,usually days later, that there was a disturbance somewhere.The helicopters were used for visual surveillance.I have a freind that was attacked or threatened ,depending how you would feel if a gun was shoved into your face and you were threatened with death ,during the times we had gasoline rationing , while she was in line for petrol. She says she has a difficult time purchasing gasoline , going to the petrol station. It scares her still.Gunfire is a major item that most people complain about , the loud noises .Someone told me once the sight of the trucks the militias used with guns mounted in the back scares them .

So , from one thing to another it is back to the same old thing here in Libya , lay down your weapons men, government build your infrastructure , provide jobs through improved economy by private sector growth.Improve everything such as education and health care.Stop the rumor mils with a free factual media. Stop the paranoia,tell the people that they ARE being spied on , listened to on their computers and phones for national security reasons .Stop thinking by not telling the people you are using these extreme measures to provide national security, that they don't know , they do. They aren't stupid.

Some days it seems as if Libya will make it with patience and lots of wise care taking by it's governing people.Other days I am ready to pack up and leave it all behind .I have had enough of the stress of wondering if the rumors of a civil war coming is true or not .Wondering if it will be safe to go to town today or not .Will the kid walking by with the gun decide to use it or not ? Do I need to stock up on water again ... just in case? Should I buy more candles since the lights have been off and on this past week Does that mean something ? I think I might be able to see the future better by reading the coffee grounds than trying to figure out what is true or not . Everyone says ," Oh , things are just FINE now . Nothing is wrong !", then you learn some one some where has decided it isn't today.

Exscape To Sand , Sun , And opps ... NOT !

2011-12-09T05:09:00.001+02:00

Those wild and crazy Gaddafi kids are at it AGAIN ! What ever are we to do with them ? This time Saadi had planned to sneak into Punta Mita, Mexico , an exclusive resort that hosts celebrities from all over the world, in order to continue to live in the life style in which he has become accustomed , along with his family , of course.The plot thickens as it involves people from New Zealand, Canada,and Mexico.And of course millions of Libya's stolen money paying for this life style of the Rich and Famous while he is on the run from Interpol arrest warrant .

In the article : Sun, sand, celebrities and Saadi: How Gaddafi’s son planned escape to lost Mexican refuge
an exclusive report by Stewart Bell and Natalie Alcoba for the National Post , the Canadian Libyan Council spokeswoman Amal Abuzgaya says :

"Since ousting Col. Gaddafi with the help of NATO, the National Transitional Council has been trying to trace the billions worth of assets the late dictator, his family and associates held around the world. About $2.2-billion worth of Libyan assets are held by Canadian institutions.
The Canadian Libyan Council said if members of the Gaddafi family own the Mexican property it should be considered an asset to be returned to the Libyan people. “Any institution, private individuals or governments who accept money from the Gaddafi family is to be held accountable through the international community, as this is unacceptable,” said Council spokeswoman Amal Abuzgaya.
She said Saadi Gaddafi’s “lavish lifestyle” had come at the expense of Libyans. “The expenditure of the Libyan peoples’ money is unacceptable and needs to be returned back to the Libyan people via their transitional government.”

The deviousness of the Gaddafi's to have stolen all this money belonging to the Libyan people , putting the money into hidden assets that are basically untraceable due to most of it being in alias's , assumed and false names channeled through many different people and companies seems to be standard criminal operating procedure. Libya may never regain their money because of all the convolutions and deceit that hides their money all over the world.In the mean time , the Gaddafi family continues to enjoys a luxurious life style that many can only dream of , while they are on the run from their past. There is a saying that goes something like this... your past will ALWAYS catch up with you with a price. In the case of the Gaddafi family and Libya's money , one can only hope this is so .

Justice For Libya's Mass Rape Victims

2011-12-02T02:02:00.000+02:00

Published on World Affairs Journal (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org)

A Step Closer to Justice for Libya’s Mass Rape Victims [1]

Ann Marlowe [2]

On November 9th, two female Libyan human rights lawyers scored a victory in a first-of-its kind lawsuit representing 15 Zwara women who charge mass rape by members of Qaddafi’s militia. Tunisia announced that it will extradite Qaddafi henchman Baghdadi Mahmudi to Libya to face a battery of charges, including those from the Zwara attorneys. Mahmudi, who held a variety of ministerial positions under Qaddafi beginning in 1992, including one equivalent to that of prime minister, fled to Tunisia on August 21st and on September 22nd was sentenced to six months in a Tunisian jail for entering the country illegally. The Tunisian government dragged its feet on the Libyan extradition request, and finally, on November 5th, Rebab Haleb, 31, and her law partner Zeituna Moammar, 42, organized an impromptu protest in front of the Zwara courthouse that attracted about 100 citizens of both genders—the first such demonstration in Zwara.
The case stems from a March 14th phone conversation, intercepted and taped by NATO, in which Mahmudi speaks with Tayeb Essaffi, another member of the Qaddafi inner circle. Mahmudi gives orders to Essaffi to tell the kitaib—specially well-paid and equipped militia under the command of Qaddafi’s sons or trusted consigliere—to station five young men in front of every house in Zwara so that kitaib men can “enjoy themselves” inside. (The word “rape” wasn’t used.) The tape was released by NATO on August 12th and aired on TV and radio in liberated areas of the country. Qaddafi fled Tripoli a week later.
In Libya, as in many other Islamic countries, rape carries a stigma for the victims. So the attorneys obtained permission to present the private testimony of the victims, sparing them a humiliating appearance in court. Here in the Muslim world, many rape cases are never prosecuted because the victims will not testify. And under sharia law, the requirement of the rapist’s confession or four male (!) witnesses makes it particularly difficult to prove guilt.
Moammar and Haleb both support shariah law, even its approval of polygamy. Moammar, earthy and outgoing, said that polygamy was good for single women in Libya like her, since there was an imbalance between single women and men, especially now that so many men have been killed in the war. Haleb, married and more self-contained, said she would have no objection if her husband took another wife for one of the reasons allowed by Islam.
Neither attorney seemed to think that shariah would interfere with effective prosecution of their case. Moammar, a physiotherapist for ten years before attending law school, says that the women were examined by a doctor so this evidence will be used in court. Haleb says that while just one of the rapists was caught—accidentally—he confessed and knows the names of some of the others.
The two attorneys are bringing the lawsuit in Libya rather than before the International Criminal Court (ICC) because the chance of a maximum sentence is greater. Although under Libyan law rape carries a penalty of three to fifteen years, they hope that Mahmudi will get a longer sentence. “There is a long list” of charges against Mahmudi, Haleb explained. He apparently incited rape in other cities, too. Asked what sentence she hopes for, Haleb made a throat-cutting gesture—but the charges don’t warrant the death penalty under Libyan law.
The rape case is one of the dirtier chapters in Qaddafi’s dirty war against his own people. A relaxed beach town with gentle Caribbean-green water, located only 47 miles from the Tunisian border, Zwara rebelled against the regime on February 20th. Revolutionaries seized about 200 assault rifles from the government arsenal with their bare hands. The city remained free for several weeks, but on March 18th, several hundred men of the kitaib entered Zwara with about a dozen tanks. As Ayoob Sufyon, 24, a student of English literature who was active in the rebellion put it, “Of course we lost.” Many of the kitaib fighters were from Jumayl, an inland Arab town that has a long history of land disputes with Zwara.
On March 18th, after destroying many shops—a mile or so of storefronts were still smashed and gutted when the town fell to the rebels on August 23rd, though they are mainly repaired now—the kitaib moved on to searching houses for revolutionaries or weapons. They arrested about 400 men. But after arresting men from the house, some of the kitaib went back to rape women. Mahmudi denied the accusations and said the women in question had sex voluntarily or for money with the Jumayl militia—a ridiculous argument in such a small, insular town.
As an Amazigh city, Zwara had a greater stake in the downfall of the Qaddafi regime than most places in Libya. The concept of a people who were indigenous to Libya but were not Arab (or, originally, Muslim) was anathema to Qaddafi, who tried to extirpate their ancient Tamazight language and culture. Qaddafi starved Zwara of resources. For twenty years, the town’s broken desalination plant wasn’t repaired, though it’s working now. There’s no proper hospital—Zwara mothers still give birth in one of the neighboring Arab towns with maternity wards, and births are registered as such to make it appear that the Zwara population is not increasing. There isn’t even a public playground with functioning equipment.
In addition to the resentment that most people here felt for the Qaddafi regime, Haleb’s family has a special burden. On October 6, 1984, her 31-year-old cousin, Ferhat Haleb, was hung in public in Zwara for having the telephone number of an anti-Qaddafi activist on him. The Libyan government had tried to force Haleb’s relatives to sign his execution warrant to make it appear to be the will of the people. When they refused, the Libyan army threatened to send jet fighters to bomb Zwara. The family had to cave in and solicit signatures from their neighbors on Ferhat’s execution warrant to avoid the bombing (see here [3] for further details). Next to the spot where he was executed, a former cinema damaged on March 18th was re-labelled “Hall of the Martyr Ferhat Haleb” after Zwara was liberated on August 23rd. But the extradition of Mahmudi is perhaps the best memorial so far to those, like Ferhat Haleb, who were murdered, raped, and imprisoned by the Qaddafi regime.

Source URL: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/ann-marlowe/step-closer-justice-libya%E2%80%99s-mass-rape-victims

Links:
[1] http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/ann-marlowe/step-closer-justice-libya%E2%80%99s-mass-rape-victims
[2] http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/users/ann-marlowe
[3] http://www.temehu.com/imazighen/berberism.htm#libyanberbers

Map Of NATO Bombings Of Libya

2011-12-01T03:11:00.000+02:00

I found in the Guardian Data Blog.,a map of all the NATO bombings in Libya during the Libyan conflict from March 31, 2011 to October 20,2011. Personally I think it is not showing all the places that were hit, or total amounts of ordnance that was dropped .It sure seemed like a whole lot more bombs than the map indicates. It is pretty interesting to see though.Check it out , click here to see the interactive map of NATO bombings in Libya .

Taking A Break

2011-11-29T18:15:00.000+02:00

Well , lets see , what have Moe and I been up too lately ???? Last Thursday was Thanksgiving . For the first time in years I didn't cook Thanksgiving dinner .You can't find a turkey anywhere here in Tripoli , turkey breast maybe, but an entire turkey, no way. We have looked for months now for a turkey but nothing.We have even tried to special order a turkey, no luck .Sent Moe and our son out to buy some chickens , thinking maybe to cook chicken instead of turkey, but my son refused to buy any , saying that there was a bad/contaminated shipment of imported chickens in town. That they might have possibly been mixed up with Libyan chickens ?, Anyway, no luck with the chicken ideal. I thought to myself , why get so stressed over nothing .It's just another day on the calendar.

We went out that evening for a coffee run.While we were out Moe said why don't we buy chicken ( Yes I said chicken . Evidently chicken was safe after all !) shawarmas wrapped in fatera , which is one of our favorites .Then we stopped and got some gooey sweets . So this Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be one of my bests. I didn't have to cook it ! Any cook will tell you the best meal is one they didn't have to cook , lol .

Friday we went for a drive in the countryside around Tripoli. All the early rain we have had the last two months has tricked the grass and plants into thinking it is spring. There were tiny delicate little flowers strewn all over fields that haven't been plowed under for winter crops.Everything is so green . It is amazing how little water can turn the desert green.

Saturday, a group of ladies I am friends with had a get together at Khadijateri's beautiful house.It was so nice to sit in some one else home , talking ,enjoying other women's companionship after months with no one but Moe to talk to , lol .Everyone brought tons of food.All sorts of delicious varieties that made one forget all about diets and other ugly words.We had a fantastic time.

I have started to read books again. I find I am able to concentrate once again now that there is more stability in the world around me. I have read three books so far and almost finished with the book " The Help". I am able to relate to this book being from the south of the USA and from the time period that the book is set in.Although I was raised in the south , my mother was from the north of the USA.She raised my sisters and I not to be prejudice of blacks and other minorities. I was considered an "outsider" when it came to civil rights and "southern civil right philosophy" of the 50's and 60's .

While doing all this reading , I have taken a break from the computer , the internet , and the world at large.It has been actually nice not to be "so connected" to all the news , all the time .I feel less stressed , calmer , less worried about whether or not the world is going to hell in a hand bucket or not. I have stopped worrying about the Libyan political scene , for now.I have even taken a break from my daily household chores, doing only what is required.Yeah !I hate making the bed ! Life is good again.

It's Turkey Day !

2011-11-24T03:03:00.000+02:00

This is sooooo true , especially this year , at least for Mohamed and I . We survived a war, terror and fears we never had before the war, managing to come out the other side all in one piece .Thanks to God's many blessings .We have been so blessed with great family , friends , and wonderful neighbors that have helped us countless times this past year .Truly I am not sure what we would have done with out them all .

So , I wish to say that I hope all of you will take a moment today to count your many blessings and give thanks . You will be surprised at how many you have once you start the counting. Happy Thanksgiving to all from Mohamed and OTE .

New Libyan Government Posts And Libyan Womens Rights

2011-11-24T02:39:00.000+02:00

Well , Libya is moving toward the long road of recovery. It may take a while but it looks like Libya just might make it.Below at the bottom of the page is a list of new ministers in the new NTC Prime Minister Abdulraheem El Keeb's transitional executive board .

The women in Libya are also getting their voices herd as well .They are voicing their concerns for their future rights in the new Libya , along with their hopes and fears.Read this article , it is quite informative as to what Libyan women themselves are thinking .It covers all topics including their views on Shari'a law , polygamy , a larger and more active role in politics ,and foreign intervention on their behalf .The new NTC ministers have three posts held by women now. There are many assistant minister posts and assistant-assistant minister posts now being held by women in this new government. I take it as a positive sign that women are being given a more active seat in the government and not just merely as a show piece or window dressing.

New NTC Minister Posts :

Official List for Prime Minister Abduraheem El-Keib’s Transitional Executive Board

Prime Minister: Abduraheem El-Keib
Deputy Prime Minister: Mustafa AbuShagur
Minister of Religious Affairs: Hamza AbuFaris
Minister of Justice: Khalifa Ashour
Minister of Telecome: Anwar Fituri
Minister of Labor: Mustafa Rujbani
Minister of Health: Dr. Fatima Hamroush
Minister of Interior: Fawzi Abdela’ali
Minister of Energy: Awad Beroin
Minister of Trade and Commerce: Sharkasi
Minister of Education, Sulaiman Sayeh
Minister of Foreign Affiars: Ashour Ben Khayil *
Minister of Defense: Col. Osama Juwaili
Minister of Planning: Isa Tuwaijri
Minister of Social Affairs: Mabrouka Jibril
Minister of Oil: Ben Yizza
Minister of Finance: Hasan Zaglam
Minister of Agriculture: Abdul-Hamid Sulaiman BuFruja
Minister of Industry: Mahmoud Fetais
Minister of Scientific Research and Higher Education: Dr. Naeem Gheriany**
Minister of Investment: Ahmed Attiga
Minister of Culture and Civil Society: Abdul Rahman Habil
Minister of Electricity: Awadh Barasi
Minister of the Martyrs: Ashraf bin Ismail
Minister of Local Government: Mohammad Hadi Hashemi Harari
Minister of Housing: Ibrahim Alsagoatri
Minister of Transportation: Yousef Wahashi
Minister of Youth: Fathi Terbil
Minister of Construction: Ibrahim Eskutri
*earlier reported as Ibrahim Debbashi
** earlier report as Fathi Ragab Akkari

رئيس الوزراء: د. عبدالرحيم الكيب.
نائب رئيس الوزراء: د. مصطفى أبوشاقور.
نائب رئيس الوزراء: عمر عبدالله عبدالكريم.
وزير الخارجية: عاشور بن خيال.
وزير الداخلية: فوزي عبدالعالي.
وزير الدفاع: العقيد أسامة الجويلي.
وزير المالية: حسن زقلام.
وزير البحث العلمي والتعليم العالي: د. نعيم الغرياني.
وزير الإقتصاد: الطاهر شركس.
وزير العمل والتأهيل: مصطفى الرجباني.
وزير الصحة: د. فاطمة الحمروش.
وزير الصناعة: محمد محمود الفطيسي.
وزير الثقافة والمجتمع المدني: عبدالرحمن هبيل.
وزير الأوقاف والشؤون الدينية: حمزة أبوفارس.
وزير التعليم: د. سليمان الساحلي.
وزارة العدل: علي حميدة عاشور.
وزارة الحكم المحلي: محمد الهادي الهاشمي الحراري.
وزارة الإسكان والمرافق: إبراهيم السقوطري.
وزارة المواصلات: يوسف الوحيشي.
وزير الشباب والرياضة: فتحي تربل.
وزارة الشؤون الإجتماعية: مبروكة الشريف جبريل.
وزارة التخطيط: عيسى التويجري.
وزارة الزراعة: سليمان عبد الحميد بوفروجة.
وزارة الكهرباء: د. عوض البرعصي.
وزارة الإتصالات: د. أنور الفيتوري

The Places I Have Been

2011-11-22T03:30:00.000+02:00

I have......

been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.

I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.

I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work.

I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I'm not too much on physical activity anymore.

I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often.

I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.

Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older.

One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!

And, sometimes I think I am in Vincible but life shows me I am not!

I have been in Deepshit many times; the older I get, the easier it is to get there.

Prozac Anyone ?

2011-11-22T00:54:00.000+02:00

There were a few Thanksgivings I wish I had thought of this ! LOL! Just a few more days until Thanksgiving . It is this Thursday , which also happens to be my oldest daughters birthday.For both of our sakes , I won't say HOW long ago that was , hehhehe. Hope it will be a happy non-Prozac Thanksgiving for all of you Americans.

Men Want Shri'a Law In Libya

2011-11-19T02:54:00.000+02:00

I found this article on Facebook tonight on some ones post. I think it says it all .In Libya, Young Men Who Don't Want Women Empowered, they like Sharia law I have talked to men of all ages here in Tripoli , of all walks of life , educated and not so educated ,and they all agree with this sentiment of having Islamic Shari'a law, as the law of the land.They think it is fair and just for all , including women

In the Quran it does say that women have their rights to own property , handle their money , right to inheritance,etc, but a women is under her father, her brother , uncle, cousin, husband, or sons guardianship all her life depending who is in charge of her .If they say she can not do something , go somewhere , have something , see someone, then she can not , no matter what her rights are , because it also says in the Quran a man knows best for a woman, and her guardian has the best knowledge for her. Period , end of story, no discussion do what he says .So yeah , for a man it is the ideal law . For a female , not so much.

I have heard university educated girls agree with this sentiment, saying a man will know what is best for me. Wives opt for the " no comment" silence when the subject of plural wives are brought into the conversation I have noticed , but in private it is a whole other discussion . Not a single one agrees with pluralism .Nor do I . It also says in the Quran that a man MAY have 4 wives ... as long as he can support them identically and most importantly and telling , equally. We all know that yes , you might have more than one love in your life at a time , but never will you love them exactly the same . It is impossible to love more than one person at the same time, the same way as the other.Ask any parent .So , in essence Allah is saying in a very vague way , no to pluralism, I feel .

I feel that so many of these men are secretly afraid of women. The power of women , their strength, their fortitude , the ability to think for their selves, to reach a conclusion all on their own with out a man's input.Why it is so , I am not too sure since men owe their very being is due to some woman's willingness to put her life on the line giving him his own life at birth.Her care in raising him to manhood , teaching him right from wrong , good from bad, to love and to trust. Somewhere in that man's life these teachings most have been lost,for him to be so fearful of the very beings that gave him love and kindness .It takes a strong man to love a strong woman.

Glass Half Empty

2011-11-14T04:26:00.000+02:00

Things have been sorta crazy in different parts of Libya , mainly near Tripoli, the last couple of days . Here in Tagura it has been calm-ish . We had a sad incident here in our neighborhood over the week end, that is Libya's week end ( Thursday night , Friday, and Saturday) .One of the young guys that is a member of the Weapons Retrieval team that is sent to different areas of town to collect arms and ammunition from civilians was shot and killed . He was shot in the head by a Ghadaffy loyalist .One other member of the team was shot and wounded in the leg at the same time. We had a lone person shooting off gun fire Friday and Saturday in our neighborhood.That stopped yesterday thank goodness.

I have heard conflicting stories by this one and that one , depending what side they were/ are on, as to different reasons for the on going conflict. If you speak to a " New Libya " person , the majority are ":sunshine and roses, we can work it out, everything will be ok" genre . There are a few that are quit sensibly worried about a eruption of civil disobedience and possible civil war between the two factions due to Gadaffy's sons still at large , stirring up trouble among the population.The die hard Gadaffy supporters are enraged over real or supposed inequities or injustices shown toward them . Plenty of blame for both sides to go around , but when listening to them all I hear is , " I don't want compromise and I don't want to forgive and forget".How do you come to an understanding with such attitudes ?

Then there are the "moderates" who call themselves modern , open minded , " cool " Muslims.They want their country to be Islamic ,but not too Islamic , but Islamic , get it?Me neither.They want a medium , half way meeting place where the men can still have it all and " of course the women have their freedom too", but only if the men get to have a say in how , when , where , and how much freedom. Oh, they don't admit it publicly , but that is what they mean when you have a discussion in private with them.

Don't forget those earnest non moderate Muslims that want to rule by the strict Islamic code of law, the Shari'a .They at least don't try to hide the fact that they want to have complete control over everyone in their own little world , like their women.Got to admire them in their honesty at least.

There are the Libyans that don't want to have people that speak their minds freely on any and all subjects , the non freedom of speachers as I like to call them . I have heard some say in this new Libya there is no room for different religions , such as Christians or Jews.I wonder , do they realize that there have been Christians and Jews in Libya longer than Islam has been here ?Wouldn't that blow their minds if one day I just throw that fact in for chuckles and grins,lol.

On the plus side of things , I read where Egyptian Air will resume fights into Tripoli on Nov.17th.Turkish Airlines and Italy's Alitalia are already flying in and out of Tripoli.Good news for those that want to return to Libya , or come here to help/work? I am not sure , but I haven't heard much talk to support this next news item ,but not too many of the previous foreign company's that were operating here in Libya are back yet.Many Libyans are eagerly awaiting for them to come back , reopen their doors for business , so they can have their jobs back .So many people waiting , doing nothing , earning nothing,depressed because they have no income , with sky rocketing prices on everything for sale , making it impossible to support their families.

I don't feel too hopeful tonight as I write this.I think Libya's glass is half empty right now.Can't some one go fill up that darn water pitcher up, so it will have water in it to fill the glass up ?

Someone Like You

2011-11-09T01:51:00.000+02:00

Hope your Eid was as great as Mohamed's and mine ... filled with family and friends .

Wanted to share this song with you ,"Someone Like You ",by Adel. All of us has a "Someone " in our life somewhere in our past.

Happy Eid Adha 2011

2011-11-07T12:39:00.000+02:00

Wishing all a peaceful Eid filled with happiness , health, and wealth for the coming year !

Shoot Out At Tripoli Hospital On Halloween ?

2011-11-03T04:19:00.000+02:00

Well , here I was just now bragging about how things were getting so much better and I learn about this ! There was a shoot out between two militia factions here in Tripoli at the main hospital from around 1a.m until dawn which is almost 7a.m.on Monday, October 31st . How's that for a trick or treat ,surely no treat ! I thought that was a thing in the past , happening under Ghadaffy.Guns , machine guns , and anti air craft guns all being fired inside a hospital? Drunken militia men coming to a hospital to kill a wounded patient? Read the below report by Nick Meo for The Telegraph.

Libya News

Libya: revolutionaries turn on each other as fears grow for law and order

Hundreds of revolutionaries fought each other at a hospital in Tripoli early on Monday, in the biggest armed clash between allies since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

A file photo of Libyan National Transitional Council fighters in action Photo: AFP

By Nick Meo, Tripoli

9:00PM GMT 31 Oct 2011

133 Comments

The fighting fuelled growing fears that nobody is in control of thousands of swaggering armed men who are still based in Tripoli and that the country's interim government will struggle to impose law and order.

Two people died from bullet wounds and at least seven fighters were injured during a battle that started when militia from the town of Zintan were stopped by guards from the Tripoli Brigade from entering the city's Central Hospital to kill a patient.

The hospital front door and entrance hall were afterwards left pocked with bullets, doctors and patients had to flee the building and two elderly patients died of heart attacks during the shooting, which lasted from about 1am until dawn. Heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns were used by both factions, supposed allies who in reality nurse a dangerous rivalry.

The shoot-out started when a group of gunmen arrived at the hospital in search of a man they had shot earlier in the night. Witnesses said the gunmen were drunk, and had come to finish the man off after learning that he had survived and been taken for medical treatment.

Doctors asked them to leave, at which point one of them pulled out a pistol and began shooting.

"He was overpowered, but then hundreds of Zintan men arrived outside the hospital with heavy weapons and shooting started," said Mohamad Hamza, a Tripoli Brigade fighter in charge of security. "We had to call for backup, and our boys came from all over Tripoli.
"We couldn't believe that they were shooting at us. I had to say to them, you are shooting at a hospital, not at Muammar Gaddafi's 32nd Brigade. Eventually, after several hours, a Shaikh came from the mosque and persuaded them to stop and they handed over three of them who started it to Tripoli's military council."
He said one Zintan fighter and a passer-by were killed in shooting, and seven Tripoli Brigade men were injured, two seriously. He said he believed Zintan injured were taken to other hospitals.
The incident will raise pressure on the fragile National Transitional Council to disarm the former rebel fighters who are still at large in Libya's capital, even though they were asked to leave weeks ago and have been ordered to give up their heavy weapons.
The Zintan brigades were some of the most ferocious fighters against Gaddafi's forces and helped lead the attack on Tripoli, but have outstayed their welcome, earning a reputation for mayhem and looting.
Thousands of them have ignored pleas to go, staying put instead of returning to their town in the mountains three hours drive to the south.
The battle came on the day Human Rights Watch warned in a report that the entire population of 30,000 people from the town of Tawargha, near Misurata, has been driven out by former rebels for siding with Gaddafi. There have been reports that some of its men, who are predominantly black-skinned, may have been shot or beaten.
Tripoli's residents fear that there will be more clashes in their city, which is desperate to get back to normality. Mr Hamza, in charge of security at the hospital, said he expected more trouble. "I think it will happen again," he said. "They will be back for revenge."
Peter Cole, Libya analyst with the International Crisis Group, said: “Rivalry between brigades from different cities has not been resolved and it does now pose a threat to Libya’s security.
“This suggests that the National Transitional Council needs to work harder with the militia groups to bring unity among them.”
The fighting came on the day that Nato formally ended operations in Libya.
The military action, unprecedented in setting out from the beginning to win a war while guaranteeing not to use troops to do so, was declared a success by Nato’s chief. “At midnight tonight, a successful chapter in Nato’s history is coming to an end,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general and a former Danish prime minister, said at a press conference with the interim Libyan president, Mustafa Abdul Jalil.
Libya’s interim leadership meanwhile elected an academic from Tripoli as the country’s new interim prime minister.
Abdel-Rahim al-Keeb was chosen by the National Transitional Council and will appoint a new Cabinet in coming days. The new government is to run Libya in the coming months and to pave the way for general elections

The Sound Of Silence

2011-11-03T02:39:00.000+02:00

Another night of silence .This will make number six.It is becoming common place to have a peaceful nights sleep these days .We had gunfire just several days in our neighborhood but it was a short burst. I think the boy has either run out of bullets , or he has surrendered his gun as all citizens have been requested to do .They have options of course of joining the army or the police force if they still want to do armed duty .Right now there are groups of, I think the army or the militia , not to sure which , but groups are going door to door gathering up arms.It won't be long before the gun/gun firing at random situation will be under control .Already about town you can see men and young guys getting their cars unconverted from a fighting war machine back to a civilian car .Nice. They did an amazing job fighting as they did with so little training and arms.But normal is nice too .

Went to the larger grocery store today and was dismayed over how empty the selves remain. It was almost impossible to find a simple thing like shaving cream .Had to go to several stores before finding any for Moe.But on the other hand , more and more of the food items we had taken for granted are beginning to appear. I found something I haven't seen in two yesterday . The wise businessman would load up in Tunis with all sorts of food items for here and make a killing. Food is still very expensive here with prices continuing to raise by the hour seemingly.

The Eid is coming this weekend . This is the celebration where Muslims sacrifice a sheep.I have heard different people say that the price of a sheep is anywhere from 900 dinars to as low as 450 dinars . This is for a Libyan sheep which most Libyans prefer. It is reported that the government has imported some sheep from Eastern Europe for people that want or can not afford the more expensive sheep at a much lower price than local sheep.We are leaving the whole thing up to our son this year.

Our weather has been very mild this past week, cool at night and comfortable in the day with sunny skies . But right now I can hear loud thunder booming occasionally in the distance.I have become spoiled by all this rain we have so early this year.Today driving past a field I could smell fresh cut grass.A unheard of thing for this time of year in Tripoli area.That is a late winter, early spring thing.Imagine grass tall enough to need cutting in the first week of November in Libya !Farmers are preparing their fields for winter crops.Not too many fields were planted for the autumn crops this year because of the war. Now , they will need a work force to harvest the fields when the crops ripen.Most of the guest workers went back to their countries when the war broke out . They have been slow to return.

Since NATO has ended it its mandate here the no fly zone has been lifted. As of now, only Haj pilgrims are flying out of Libya/ Tripoli, but reportedly some commercial fights will be allowed to begin flying in to Tripoli starting next week .At least that is my understanding.I might be incorrect on this matter. It seems to be a " blurred" subject. I do know of different friends returning this week end though from abroad.

So, all in all it seems progress is being made on all fronts.There is a new prime minister that has hopes running high.New political parties are being formed here and there. New activists groups are coming together to test the new governments polices toward various civil rights issues that they feel are long over due to be addressed. It is an interesting time in Libya.A very unique time .Some times it feels like not just Alice feel down the rabbits hole , but all of Libya too.

Happy Halloween !

2011-10-31T04:34:00.001+02:00

About Last Thrusday

2011-10-29T04:41:00.000+02:00

My internet has been acting up for several weeks now. It quit altogether week before last . Tonight I thought I would try it one more time " Just in case", to see if another miracle has happened. It has . It is working ... for the moment . I thought I would try to express the emotions I have felt this past week.It is so difficult to put into words these feelings. So ....About last Thursday and the rest of this week.

Last Thursday, the 20th of October,Moe and I were leaving the Condo around 12:30 p.m.(noon) to the sounds of the neighborhood people shooting whatever they had available to shoot ,very scary,afraid we might be shot by a random bullet. We drive to the cafe down the street from us to get coffee before going further , wanting to debate with Moe the wisdom of going back home since we didn't know what was happening.The coffee guy looked scared, distracted. People sitting outside looking very nervous . We could feel the tension building in the air . I became frightened but had to remain calm for Moe.The man brought us our coffee. I asked him what was on the radio we could faintly hear in the back ground.He look quickly around to see if anyone was listening.He whispered to us ever so slightly over all the commotion around us, "I think Muammar has been shot, maybe even dead. No one knows for sure".Our hearts skipped a beat . We were not too sure how we should react to this news in so public a place.We stirred our hot coffee in silence , each of us lost in our own thoughts.My hands started to shake slightly.I glanced toward Mohamed just as he looked at me.Our unspoken thoughts were could this be true? At last?

I was of the mind to go home and the hell with getting my injection at the clinic in downtown Tagura , for by this time things were decidedly on the verge of chaos.Rocket launchers on the back of passing trucks were being fired into the air toward the beach.More gunfire from seemingly every passing car ,accompanied by shouts of Allah Akbar.Moe was insistent we go on to the clinic. He was hungry for adventure. I saw a look in his eye I haven't seen in a long time shining brightly. I was ready to crawl under any handy bed and pull the covers over my head.I was sure we would finally be killed by random gunfire.So , off we went , me driving reluctantly , Mohamed fueled with urgency.

On the way to the clinic we were greeted by shouts of jubilation from any one on the streets. Passing cars honking rhythmically to enthusiastic waving hands holding the new national flag. Children marched out of their schools smiling ,waving their flags , shouting , cheering; down the middle of the roads. Mothers and their children poured out of their houses in small skittishness groups , like wild mustangs being herded .Still we disbelieved it was true , that Ghadaffy was captured or dead.It had to be another false rumor as all the others had been.I refused to believe.Moe was rocking on the brink of hesitation.I guarded my hopes close to my heart this time.I wouldn't be fooled again.

The main health clinic in Tagura is situated next to the center of the municipal heart of Tagura.A traffic round about is there ,as well as a town square where celebrations are held. The 20 minutes it took us to get to the town square from where we had been,had changed the square into a melee of cars , trucks with mounted guns on the back, young NTC fighters firing off any thing they could lay their hands on, to the man on the street with his own gun of choice.Smoke from so many guns being fired all at the same time had turned the air blue with smoke.It stung the eyes ,made you choke on the cordite. Our ears ushered us into near deafness.It was beyond scary.All I could think of was what goes up must come down.Shell casings littered the roads in bright copper sheets.

I found the back way into the clinic.We still didn't definitively know for sure whether or not Ghadaffy was alive ,dead, or what, at this point in time.The clinic was almost abandoned for most of the staff had joined the people on the main street that runs in front of the clinic.I found a lone nurse , sitting dejectedly staring off into space, a frown on her brow.I greeted her thankful to be inside somewhere that I felt safe from the gunfire outside.I asked her had she heard the news?Hoping she had . She gave me a go to hell look and said there wasn't any news , just false rumors. So , I asked her what she thought of all the commotion outside in the street , not realizing she was a unhappy Ghadaffy supporter.She told me a bunch of dead people were celebrating their demise .My blood ran cold with her words.That little tiny light of hope I had secretly held deep inside me went out with a sizzle.I got my injection and hobbled to the car feeling crushed , again.

I found Mohamed almost dancing a jig . If he had been capable , he would have danced. One of the clinics employees had a radio and the news was out , Ghadaffy had been captured and was now dead. It was official.It was real. A actual fact. The man was dead.Here we sat , at the end of a very long road for us.One we thought we would never see.Astonishment, amazement for the feat the young men and women of Libya had accomplished, the sacrifices we had all made , sorrow,the anger,the brains defense mechanism kicked in to protect us and refused to let us assimilate this news in too positive light. There must be a catch , there just had to be one somewhere.Then we would break into a tiny smile, as if a forbidden thought that we alone knew ,brushed up against across our conciseness. This was something that needed time.

We drove up and down the main street in downtown Tagura with the parade of humanity celebrating a miracle the rest of the day.Up and down , back and forth we drove .Sometimes dazed,other times in euphoria bordering on hysteria .I still held something back deep inside me . I couldn't let go as the others were doing . I honked my car horn , flashed my peace sign like all the others but something said don't give in to joy just yet.Then a man on the side of the street , handing out paper to all that passed him , gave one to me.It was a picture.A picture of a man that had ruled my life in ways even Mohamed didn't know . A man that was so clever in his insanity , that he twisted everything he touched.That picture showed Ghadaffy dead.That was when I felt the dam break. The emotions came flooding out of me until tears soaked my blouse.I drove while wearing a veil of tears from pure joy and relief.

Since Thursday last ,Moe and I have run the gauntlet emotions.Disbelief still assails us off and on .Hope comes as a bright comet .We will hear a news report causing us to plummet to earth once again in near despair.Fear sneaks up to attack us in doubts for the future.Terror of the unknown lurks in dark shadows waiting to grab us if we walk to near.Happiness dances all around us in shades of exhilaration and ecstasy.Bliss fights off desolation.I think we will make it. I hope we will make it. I have my fingers crossed that we will make it.Good luck Libya !

Land Of Confusion

2011-10-15T09:18:00.000+02:00

Normally on a Friday Moe and I stay home especially since the war started.Sometimes we will go for a ride into town to check things out, but the last few weeks there has been some sort of march , festival , protest , or demonstration for the new government ,or against Ghadaffy.I don't particularly enjoy driving in the traffic , and as neither Moe nor I are able to do any walking , parking the car is out of the question. Generaly we drive around a certain area in town that isn't too crowded.

BUT.... this Friday I decided to surprise Moe and go off the beaten path. I choose to drive into town on the freeway instead of the coast road. I wanted to see where it had flooded . To see if there were any traces of the flood we had last week .There wasn't ,but we did encounter check points on the highway leading to the freeway.Well , it was a Friday , so we really didn't think much about that.

We drove towards town and the exit that would take us to Bab Azazia. I changed my mind about going there as it would entail walking , so exited before we got to the off ramp going to Bab Azazia.This was the exit off the freeway ,on the opposite side from the Khaddbah and Abu Salim neighborhoods , that leads towards the Rixos Hotel.I haven't been too interested in going to the Medan Shuhada (or as it is known in English, The Martyrs Square) formally known as the Green Square, but I did want to go to the hotel and have a cup of coffee there.The most popular places to go to in town these days are the Medan Shuhada , Bab Azazia , or the Rixos Hotel. Here again we encountered check points along the way where before there hadn't been any.

We got caught up in a heavy flow of traffic coming off the freeway. This was unusual too , all this traffic on a Friday.We found the hotel but couldn't get to it. It was blocked off. Oh well .So , off we go to another part of town that was fairly close and easy to get to , so I thought.Once again we ran into traffic from check points . Lots of NTC fighters to-ing and fro-ing all over the place, but this is the normal these days. Resounding shouts of Allah Alkhabar rang in the air.Moe said he heard shots, but I was too busy concentrating on driving to pay any attention to shots in the air.More check points , traffic , cars being check thoroughly , which is a good thing .Eventually we get to where we want to go .

We could hear reports now and then at different check points of trouble in first one place ( the ones we had just been near !) and then another .Fighting had broken out , reports of attacks and we could now see a pall of smoke in the distance hanging over the city.We decided it was time to go home . Enough of adventurous sight seeing in town.

We passed through so many check points between town and Tagura I lost count. I got to where when we approached a check point I automatically popped the trunk to my car. I didn't really mind as it was reassuring to see they were being so thorough in looking for any hidden weapons .

Later last night Moe was watching the Libyan news in Arabic. I could pick up key words now and then. My Arabic is atrocious. Moe's strokes have left him with difficulties with his speaking language skills , so it makes for very interesting and unique translations .More like a puzzle that needs assembling.I have to admit I am not very good with puzzles, so I am often in the dark as to what has happened .It wasn't until I could get the internet to open for me that I found out all the trouble spots we had been in the middle of ,or around yesterday. It probably was a good thing I didn't know at the time , lol .I am pretty sure it will be a while before we will go into town again.

One more thing I want to talk about before I go that happened yesterday .I saw on the news where some mosques had been desecrated in attacks by Salafi hardliner Muslims here in Tripoli. They said the mosques they attacked belonged to Sufi Muslims ,therefore Not permissible.They don't consider the Sufi's to be Muslims . The Salafi are a branch of the Sunni Muslims. The Salafi said that the mosques they attacked had relics , bodies of men buried in them that many ( not just the Sufi's) consider holy men or holy imman's (teachers) that are respected .They believed this to be wrong and took these drastic steps to right the wrong .

Here is the part I have trouble with, and many others may as well , almost all mosques here in Libya will be named after some holy man ,having his body buried within the mosque .It is just a custom that is a hold over from the time of Turkish occupation .

Another thing I find ironic is that during the entire time of the battles for Sirte , Bani Walid, and Sebha, the mosques all over Libya ,especially the Tripoli area, have played almost non stop a hypnotic chant over the loud speakers of " Allah Alakhbar" . Usually the mosques will broadcast this from noon prayers until the last prayers of the night , but sometimes even afterward.This is a welcomed and acceptable action from the mosques .The catch? This is in actual fact a Sufi custom, this chanting, therefore by the Salafi's own beliefs , not religiously acceptable. Religious intolerance should be unacceptable in the New Libya .

I heard this song by Genesis last night as I was waiting for the internet to connect.Thinking to myself how true this was for the world .Enjoy.

Need $2,000,000 ?

2011-10-13T05:05:00.000+02:00

Writer Nick Meo, for The Telegraph, wrote a great article on the search for Muammer Ghadaffy.Read below:

No stone unturned in the hunt for Colonel Gaddafi

Libyan forces are still on the hunt for Colonel Gaddafi. But, as one man leading the chase tells Nick Meo, they plan to "examine every grain of sand in the search for him."

Col Gaddafi could be a fugitive in the desert, hiding in a secret bunker under the capital, or living abroad after a successful escape out of the country Photo: REX

By Nick Meo, Ghadames

8:00AM BST 09 Oct 2011

His eyes burning, the former police colonel leant forward in his chair and described in a quiet voice what he would do to Muammar Gaddafi if his men were lucky enough to catch him.

Colonel Moftah Al-Swiah, a wiry 38-year-old former detective, was in the police force in a town near Tripoli until he defected last February to become a commander in Libya's revolutionary army.

Now he is using his investigation skills in the vast desert along the Algerian border in the biggest manhunt Libya will ever see.

"I would not kill him if I found him, I would put him in a cage and take him around Libya," the colonel said. "And I pray to God that it is we who get the chance to capture him; my men will not rest until they find that criminal."

His "men" were in fact mostly battle-hardened teenagers, 50 young rebels who were at school or university when the revolution broke out.

Since then they have fought through the civil war, and now they have joined the hunt for Gaddafi in the desert. They know it could be as dangerous as anything they have faced since they took up arms.
The clue that set the former detective on Gaddafi's trail came up as he interrogated an important regime supporter near Tripoli last week.
The man let slip to Colonel Al-Swiah a hint that Gaddafi's hiding place was somewhere near the town of Ghadames – the colonel will not disclose exactly who his informant was or what he said. But it was enough for him to jump into his pick-up truck and immediately drive for six hours south into the Sahara.
He outlined his mission sitting in the foyer of the Dar Ghadames, a luxury hotel usually full of tourists at this time of year, but on Saturday with none to seen.
Instead the hotel had been taken over by the colonel's men, who propped up their machine-guns in the foyer before relaxing on the sofas ahead of their next desert foray.
"The blood of 14 martyrs who fought with us and died is on our conscience," Col Al-Swiah said. "We are hunting Gaddafi because of them, so they can rest in peace. We will examine every grain of sand in the search for him."
In reality, less poetically, he was sending his men out to pick up Gaddafi supporters, then interrogating them for information.
Afterwards, when the colonel left to give his men their orders, Fathi Uoshi, the National Transitional Council's military chief in Ghadames, said: "He and his men had a hard time in the fighting; I think they feel guilty for surviving when their comrades died.
"That is what is driving them. We depend on men like them if we are to have any chance of finding Colonel Gaddafi."
The hunt for the fugitive former leader was infused with new energy last week.
Ghadames was flooded with NTC fighters from Tripoli and the north, after the interim government realized that it had to do more to try to seal a western border that was wide open to anybody trying to get out of Libya.
More NATO aircraft than usual were flying overhead, local people said, and the new government sent a military aircraft to be based at the airport, from where it is patrolling the desert, looking for convoys or unusual activity.
The town, surrounded by desert palms eight hours' drive from Tripoli, is one of the last habitable outposts on the edge of trackless sand-seas and sun-baked mountain ranges in the vast and empty south; the wastes, traversed only by smugglers and wandering Tuareg nomads, are an ideal hiding place for a fugitive, .
Colonel Fathi – a former officer in Libya's air force – was busy dealing with the messy aftermath of a tribal war that broke out in Ghadames two weeks earlier between Tuareg tribesmen, supporters of Gaddafi, and Arabs who had joined the revolution. Fifteen people died in the fighting, which threatens to re-erupt at any time – a problem hampering an effective manhunt.
Colonel Fathi, who is also in overall charge of the hunt for Gaddafi in the district, said he was exchanging information with NATO daily, and directing NTC forces, including 30 expert desert trackers, to search for signs of Gaddafi or other key regime figures making their way towards Algeria and safety. Patrols have been sent out along the unmarked border as well, to try to catch anyone going across, no doubt spurred to greater efforts by the NTC increasing the reward on Gaddafi's head to $2 million.
"All the NATO technology is trying to pick him up, they are using the satellites, the listening devices," Colonel Fathi said. "But perhaps an old man who knows the ways of the desert will be the one to find him."
The last reliable sighting of the former Brother Leader was soon after the fall of Tripoli in August.
He gave no inkling in his latest recorded message to the Libyan people, broadcast by a Syrian-based television station on Thursday, in which he called on them to "go out and march in their millions" in protest at the "unbearable" conditions they now faced.
He could be a fugitive in the desert, hiding in a secret bunker under the capital, or living abroad after a successful escape out of the country.
But the desert south of Ghadames seems one of the likeliest hiding places and potential escape routes; his wife, daughter and a son fled into Algeria from there in August.
Last week Hisham Buhagiar, a carpet tycoon turned leading Gaddafi-hunter, said he thought his prey was somewhere near Ghadames.
Rumor and speculation are buzzing across the south; one story has it that Gaddafi is paying his way with stolen gold bars, each stamped with his image.
According to another he escaped in a $5 million armored BMW, supplied by France when he was friends with its government - a car reputedly bristling with the latest electronic-jamming devices and thus "invisible" to NATO's radar and satellites.
More likely is that he is being helped by Tuareg friends on both sides of the border.
The nomads have long been loyal supporters who were well-treated by his government, and Gaddafi was said to have relied for guidance on a Tuareg soothsayer, who has since fled her home. An impoverished people who once ran the caravan routes across the Sahara, they know the desert trails, and Gaddafi may have paid Tuareg guides for help.
If Algeria's government – run by old friends - was prepared secretly to take him under its wing, it could offer him a protection that impoverished African nations like Niger or Mali, also spoken of as possible refuges, could not.
"If he is still in Libya, Gaddafi probably travels in convoys a lot smaller than the ones he used to use," said Abdelrahman Busin, a spokesman for the NTC's forces, now called the Libyan Liberation Army.
"He probably doesn't move much, and when he does it must be under the cover of dark, discreetly and quickly. He may still have hundreds of loyal supporters, many motivated by money, although they probably function as a spy network. He cannot afford to draw attention to himself by having too many people around him."
For the NTC, beset with problems, catching Gaddafi is just one among a string of competing priorities.
But Mr Busin added: "As long as he is alive and roaming free we must expect the possibility of his supporters launching terrorist attacks."
Senior NTC officials in Ghadames are urgently trying to mend fences with the Tuareg after last month's fighting, fear that without their help and information Gaddafi will prove impossible to find.
"I visited the Tuareg refugees who have fled Ghadames and told them if you catch Gaddafi, you will be number one in Libya," said Sharif Abdulmula, 33, the field commander for Colonel Al-Swiah. However, many were still unwilling to turn against their former ally.
Commander Abdulmula, who had never been to the Sahara before, knows how much he needs their help; he was organizing a four-day patrol deep into the desert with his men who, like him, were all from the cities of the coastal north.
"It is very dangerous, with a big risk of ambush," he said, stroking the bushy beard which he has vowed to shave only when Gaddafi is captured.
Without the help of the Tuareg, it may have grown a lot longer before that happens.

Libya - THE IN PLACE For Hollywood

2011-10-13T03:30:00.000+02:00

You would never know that Libya isn't the hottest spot to find the biggest stars by the way they have been flocking to Libya these last few weeks.Last week Sean Penn was here to inspect war damage.To show his support for the Libyan peoples struggle to win their freedom form 42 years of dictatorship under Ghadaffy's rule.Yesterday it was actress and UN Goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie. She was spotted in Misarata showing her solidarity with the Libyan people in their fight for democracy.

Late last night as we were going to bed ,we heard gunfire going off all over the area . It was alarming at 1st , as I could only think of one reason for that much gunfire so late at night , and it didn't seem like a good omen. Then we heard people shouting as they ran through the streets below the Condo firing their guns. They were shouting ,"We got him .Allah Alkabar !" Then we could hear the machine guns at the check points , along with cannon fire, and rockets. Car horns could be heard as they drove down the street. The ships at sea were tooting their horns too .We became hopeful . Maybe they captured Ghadaffy? At last ? Could this actually be the end?

We rushed to turn on the tv and there we heard the good news.It wasn't Muammar Ghadaffy himself but his son Mutassim .Mutassim was a national security adviser to his father.As a soldier , he was said to be one of the directors of the war .He was captured in the battle for Sirte and sent to Ben Ghazi for questioning.Although there are conflicting statements from various members of the NTC as to whether or not he was in actual custody .

I hope it is true . As we were out and about in town today , we passed may funerals for too many young men killed in the battle for Sirte and Bani Walid . Heart breaking to think of so many dead and/wounded.The Ghadaffys have to pay for their crimes.They have committed so many crimes against the Libyan people and the world at large.They must be captured .Countries in which they have fled should be pressured into turning them over to the Libyan government.They must be forced into returning the moneys they stole from Libyan people.It is a shame the Hague didn't issue warrants for the entire family , as not a single one is innocent of crimes against humanity.

We still have cloudy skies and cool temperatures here in Tripoli. So unheard of for this time of year. Everything is emerald green. The trees shine as they wave in the wind . The grass glistens in the sunshine when it comes out.I have turned off my life support system , the air conditioner . We don't need it, as it is so pleasant outside.The only thing wrong with this "happy camper" picture is that the internet is so slow , or I have no connection at all . Just as things were going so well .I was becoming used to internet again. Oh well .

In A Rainbow

2011-10-07T04:11:00.000+02:00

Today Moe and I went to the beach . We brought sandwiches to eat as we enjoyed the view.A storm (another one) blew in suddenly . Rain so thick we couldn't see the end of the car . Wind so strong it was rocking the car .The beach started to flood , so we drove away.We headed west , turning around back toward the east to go home. As we drove down the road a huge rainbow appeared low in the sky. Then another rainbow formed above the first , followed by yet another rainbow, high over the first two rainbows . Three rainbows , one on top of the other. I have never seen such a sight before . Too bad we didn't have a camera.

The most awesome thing occurred while driving home ..... we discovered we were inside the lowest rainbow. We were in the violet spectrum of the rainbow. The light was so clear .We felt like we were inside a room filled with a warmish blue-white light. I know that sounds weird but it is true.I don't think we will forget that experience ever.

The Last 3 Days

2011-10-05T05:04:00.000+02:00

Phew ! A lot has happened is the last several days . Hum....It has rained here in Tripoli off and on for the last 48 hours . Probably had more rain than all of last year? It seems like it.It began to thunder and lighting in the early hours of Monday the 3rd. Then around 8 a.m. the storm slammed into the Condo with hurricane force winds , slashing rains , thunder that rocked the building , and lighting so close it was at times in the Condo. Scared the you know what outta of us , Patches La Chat included !The bathroom window flew open and I had to climb into the tub to close the window , all the while being under threat of electrocution from the lighting .The winds were so strong I had to use my entire body weight to force the window closed so I could lock it shut.THEN... the shower curtain falls onto my head . Nice . And while I was trying to close the window uttering choice words at the top of my lungs , Patches our cat, choose that time to have a nervous break down in the hall outside the bathroom door.She was totally traumatized from the thunder.Moe was standing there watching me and the cat laughing his head off. I didn't speak to him for an hour.

This is a picture of the freeway in Tripoli under water on Monday.Go here for more pictures.

What else? The new Libyan Situation Report is out. This report gave us some good news and some sad news . Good news 1st..... they caught and arrested Moussa Ibrahim who was the Ghadaffy spokes person , a.k.a. The Liar . YEAH !!! You must remember him. He was the one that came on TV and said no one was getting killed .His song should be , " Would I Lie To You Baby"? And it is alleged that he was dressed as a woman when captured sneaking out of Sirte.Must be a good and close friend of Saadi Ghadaffy ,lol.

The sad news , well in my eyes it is ..... A Libyan war freedom fighter , who just happens to be a Libyan Jew ( yes it could happen) came to Tripoli with , he says , the NTC permission. He came to clean out the Tripoli Old City Synagogue of trash that has accumulated in it since the last of the Libyan Jews were forced to leave Libya by Ghadaffy in 1969.Mr. David Gerbi was of course stopped. He asks the question, as do I , will the New Libya be a tolerant place to live or not?

Ok , here is how I feel about the Libyan Jews returning to Libya . If they don't live in Israel and never have , ok . If they don't support Israel in anyway shape, form, or fashion , ok .If they are willing to return here and live peacefully as Libyans and not a crusading Jews, ok.They are Libyans that have been living in forced exile and want to return home like everyone else.You should read the article to get a better picture .

In the article on the Libyan Jewish Freedom fighter , Jalil was quoted as saying ,"Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said. "Everyone who holds Libyan nationality has the right to enjoy all rights, provided that he has no other nationality but Libyan." The thing with this statement is that many Libyans are living abroad with dual Libyan citizenship, including some members of the NTC. About yen years or more years ago , Libyans were told that they could hold dual citizenship in certain circumstances.Jalil is a lawyer and should know the law.

And last but definitely not the least .....If you are Libyan , living in the USA , here is a survey for you to take.
A quote from the survey introduction says :"The objective of this survey is the following: 1. Gather demographic data on the Libyan community in the US and collect contact information 2. Get a sense of where Libyans in the US get their source of information or updates on Libya 3. Assess all the Libyan organizations or groups in the US 4. Gauge the Libyan community’s interest in developing an umbrella organization or an assembly of Libyan American associations to unify the Libyan voice in the US." This is a very serious matter. Please take the time to do the survey.

BABYCAKES !

2011-10-03T03:24:00.000+02:00

Everyone loves babies , especially if you are not the one that has to change their diapers ,lol.Got this as a email and thought it might brighten your day .Enjoy !

Everyone loves A Good Song with Feeling.

I will slap you silly!!!

Original Gang Sign.

Sup, G?

Is that edible?

WHATEVER MAN…

That’s right baby...I still got it.

Get Outta My FACE!!!

OH! C-c-c-cold Wipes!

I can’t believe this place...

Tonight you die in your sleep!

Yeah… I just farted!

Tell me she did NOT just say that!!

No More" Wasta" Favoritism

2011-09-30T04:57:00.001+02:00

Mohamed and I were out riding around in Tagura today talking about the new possibilities in the NEW LIBYA. He was saying that if a new policy was made and enforced that nepotism and "wasta" ( who you know) was thrown out the window , then with in one year or less , Libya would be fully functional ,at the very least we would have better drivers on the roads .

This evening I read a report from The Libyan Outreach Group on just this subject.I will post it here for you to read . See if you don't agree with the writes of this article from the Libyan Situation Report .

Situation Report:

Libya - September 28, 2011

Executive Summary

Highlights
Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) employees protest outside offices in Tripoli saying they want a clean break from the past regime Article

Newly appointed staff from the NCO are being protested against as they are perceived to be unqualified for their positions. NOC employees are seeking new management, who lack the corrupt behaviors that were rewarded by the Gaddafi regime. Government employed an estimated 80% of the Libyan population and was known to be rife with corruption and bribery. "This is a new era, a new revolution. We paid a lot of blood. We are looking for a huge change," said Haifa Mohammed, who said she worked in the company's sustainable development department. The protesters carried banners saying: "We need a change of leadership to return to work." and "Yes to justice, no to favoritism." (Reuters)

These sentiments are widely felt across Libya as Libyans want to move forward by building a new and better Libya. One fear the people have is repeating the same behaviors and practices of the old regime. The people want a clean slate and do not want to endure hardships caused by corruption and nepotism. During the old regime people were often hired or appointed to position not on merit but because of family or social connection, resulting in many public workers holding positions they were ill qualified for and unable to manger properly. Other employees not showing up to work but still collecting paychecks reducing the amount of jobs available for qualified workers and building resentment from workers who are actually performing their jobs.

The ousting of Gaddafi opens the door for the adoption of clear and desired management best practices, transparent and informed decision making processes, and clear performance management and accountability procedures; ultimately instituting organizational and workplace behavior change within Libya. Libya needs an enterprise human capital management office, dedicated to transforming Libya’s workforce, during this critical time of transition, whereby the international community's transfer of knowledge and expertise will be at its zenith; and giving Libyans the opportunity to learn critical skills needed during this complex and challenging period in Libya’s history.
To contact The Libyan Outreach Group by email go here.
To read the rest of the report go here .

Laugh Of The Day

2011-09-29T02:06:00.000+02:00

Life Is So Good !

2011-09-28T03:26:00.000+02:00

Fast food is making it's appearance again around town in Tripoli.Moe and I went to a little mall on Friday.We hadn't gone there since before Ramadan.We found a coffee cafe open that had been closed. They had cheese cake, pastries , the best Italian coffee , and best of all for me , PIZZA'S !OMG !!! Fully loaded with all sorts of yummy stuff.

I make a killer pizza .Normally I make a bunch of pizza's before Ramadan starts to put away in the freezer for Ramadan . The rest of the year we buy pizza's when ever we want one to eat.But this year I was unable to make the Ramadan pizza's due to a lack of cooking gas.I have had a craving for just this type of pizza.
We ordered pizza . Had a coffee to go with it and people watched .I noticed that the little hamburger stand next to the cafe looked like it would have hamburgers later in the evening too .

Today we drove past another pizza place that had been open for most of the war but recently was closed. It has reopened . They too have killer pizza. I have my fingers crossed that our favorite shawarma place will get their Egyptian workers back soon.They had 2 brothers that made the best shawarmas in the world working for them before the war.

More good news .... the internet that went off the other day , is obviously back on. Yeah !!! Heard they were doing some tweaking .The Wimaxi is still giving some people problems since they have to down load a program and IF you don't have a internet connection ( i.e. no internet at all) , then HOW do you do that?Luckily for me ( I am tech challenged) my internet connection just worked when I turned on the modium, as I have a different system.

Also , the same day as the internet went out , no connection just coincidence,our land line went out too . Today as we were leaving the house to go to the phone company to report the phone being out , we saw the phone guys at the line box on the street. So, we gave them our phone number and address. When we got home , viola , the phone worked and the internet was back on too !See? Good ,huh?

Then , as if that isn't enough to make life wonderful ,Moe's mobile phone needed money on it but ... here again ... things have changed . The number we used bfore when charging the account has been changed . We were sent a message on the phones telling us how and what to do to recharge the phone BUT ... it was in Arabic. I don't read Arabic.Moe didn't translate the message correctly and I was unable to re-charge his phone.Frustration abounds!Here again ,an angel came to our rescue and charged the phone for us .

More good news , it was coolish today , windy , and partly cloudy .That means we didn't sweat to death while we were out and about.I was able to walk almost pain free in the store today . That must mean the new meds I am taking for my arthritis is starting to work.What a blessing .Walking is highly underrated you know.

Last but least , late tonight , there was a knock on the door . Moe was sleeping . I was alone, not too sure whether or not I should even go to the door . I did in the end , asking through the door who it was before I opened the door . It was a neighbors son.He stood there with his arms full of all sorts of goodies .A flat of eggs ( about 2 1/2 dozen) ,2 kilos of tomatoes , a kilo of potatoes, several kilos of onions, and about a kilo of red hot chili peppers.He said they had just come back to town from their farm where they stayed during the fighting .His mother wanted to share some of their produce from their farm. The amazing thing was , today I had meant to buy these very same food items but became side tracked and had forgotten to buy them until we got home.I didn't want to go back out to the store once home and had decided I would go tomorrow instead . Now , tell me life isn't good.

Exclusion of women in new Libya must end

2011-09-27T23:21:00.001+02:00

Here is a great articul by the Irish/Libyan writer-actress Farah Abushwesha on the roll women played in the Libyan revolution and their future role in Libyan politics.

Exclusion of women in new Libya must end

The Irish Times - Saturday, September 24, 2011

Exclusion of women in new Libya must end

FARAH ABUSHWESHA

WORLDVIEW: LIBYAN WOMEN may not have been visible on the streets with guns, but they played an equally important role, displaying courage and strength that has been invaluable to the success of the country’s revolution. So why are women being excluded from decisions and official appointments in the new Libya?
Libyan women triggered this revolution on February 15th, when the mothers, sisters and widows of prisoners killed in the 1996 Abu Salim massacre took to the streets in Benghazi to protest outside the courthouse after their lawyer was arrested.
At home and abroad, Libyan women have protested, smuggled arms, founded civil society groups, raised awareness and delivered humanitarian aid, and continue to do so, taking a central role alongside men in Libya’s revolution – and it has united us.
Yet only one woman is listed as a member of the National Transitional Council, Dr Salwa Fawzi El-Deghali (legal affairs and women). Libyan women were not included as equal partners in last week’s Friends of Libya Paris Conference. There were unconfirmed reports this week that three women – a lawyer, an academic and an activist – have been proposed to the Tripoli NTC council and rejected.
Common excuses for this exclusion, both inside and outside Libya, is that we women must wait until the situation is more secure and that appointments should be made on merit, or that there aren’t enough qualified women to step up.
Libyan women are among the mostly highly educated and professionally highly qualified in the Arab world, and have been working in the public domain in Libya for decades. A double standard seems to be operating with respect to the “appointment on merit” argument: Libyan men with no experience are being appointed to posts. There is naturally a learning curve as Libya rebuilds its institutions, but opportunities should be inclusive of all – across the genders, regions and ethnic groups.
It is time for women to be encouraged to step forward, given their place around decision- making tables and access to the conversations about Libya’s future in accordance with United Nations Security Council mandate 1325, which emphasises the important role women play in peacebuilding.
Women4Libya is a campaign run by Libyan Women’s Society, part of the Libyan Civil Society NGO. It is calling for aid to be ringfenced to support women’s rights; financial aid for civil society and grassroots initiatives set up by women, for women; and negotiations and meetings on the future of Libya to include all tribes and regional representatives, which should include sufficient numbers of women. It has launched an online petition for greater participation of Libyan women in government http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/women4libya
Freedom of thought and expression has not been available to all Libyans for nearly 42 years and it is important that Libyan women who want to be part of the dialogue can participate equally in shaping a better Libya. Such representation should not be tokenistic, nor should it compel women to participate who would prefer to remain in the background working in equally important roles of nurturing families and helping to rebuild local communities. But the choice should be there.
Much is made in the international press of how Gadafy promoted women in unorthodox or sadistic ways – for example, his use of female bodyguards and assassins. The stories are only beginning to emerge of the abusive reality of life for many of these women. Gadafy understood how to use the power of women and how to manipulate society.
Last week saw the arrest of Huda “the executioner” Ben Amer, who at a public Gadafy- staged execution in 1984 grabbed one of the condemned hanging men. She was seen on TV pulling him down until he died. My Irish mother still speaks of her horror at watching that disgusting act. Huda was subsequently made mayor of Benghazi and terrorised the community for many years. We need to move away from this skewed view of empowerment of women; Gadafy does not represent Libyan society.
In the new Libya, there are new heroines. We have seen the iconic images of Iman al-Obeidi, who spoke out about the sexual violence inflicted on so many who have otherwise suffered in silence; the elderly lady praising rebels at a lay-by and giving them her blessing; and Malak, the five-year-old amputee from Misurata – to name a few.
The age of dictatorship is over, 51 per cent the population cannot be ignored or marginalised. We must start as we mean to go on and get women “round the table”, involved as equal partners alongside men. This issue needs to be resolved now to make sure post-conflict Libya starts off on a strong foundation – one that is inclusive and respects the skills and input of all citizens.
Women must be part of the conversation in the new Libya. To do otherwise is not to honour the legacy of the brave Libyan men and women who gave their lives for human rights in the spirit of the country’s revolution.

Farah Abushwesha is an Irish–Libyan writer and film-maker and spokeswoman for the Women4Libya campaign.
Twitter: @farahabushwesha

Road Traveled

2011-09-24T05:31:00.000+02:00

Life is just an adventure with many roads to travel down.Some are bumpy.Some are nice and smooth. Some you can drive fast on and others are sooo slow . Many have speed bumps , detours ,and stop signs, but all go somewhere.The trick is to enjoy where ever the road takes you , for however long you are driving .That is all I am doing.

I never understood how anyone could make a 5 year life plan. How do you plan that far in advance . Life is so UNPLANNED.

Any Length For A Cup Of Coffee

2011-09-23T05:12:00.000+02:00

I think I said once , that Libyans LOVE their coffee . Well , here is the proof .Some one has taken their coffee espresso machine to war so that the freedom fighters can have their daily coffee.Coffee is a serious thing here . Starbucks ain't got nothing on a Libyan coffee shop !

Allah Alkhbar

2011-09-23T01:36:00.000+02:00

Recently Mohamed and I were out and about in town running errands .Some thing happened that at the time I didn't think it was a big deal.Since this is the new and improved Libya, and we are free to voice our opinions with out fear of reprisals from the government , I would like to discuss this with you to see what you think.

We were in our car approaching a check point.There were many cars ahead of us but the line was moving quickly since the cars were being waved through the check point by the young man on duty.When my turn came I flashed him a smile and a peace sign , Moe smiled as well . We expected a nod or a smile back from the young man, as so often happens these days.We were signaled to stop which was fine . The young man came to the car and smiled at me . He asked me to say Allah Alkhbar ( God Is Great, in Arabic) .I told him of course I would say God is Great. I shouted out at the top of my lungs Allah Alkhbar, then I was allowed to drive through the check point. We all had a laugh as I drove away.I was looking in my review mirror as I drove down the street.I noticed the guy continued to wave through all the cars behind me , not stopping them as he had me.Later we drove through the check point on the opposite side of the road. No one asked me any questions as I came through the check point, but they did smile back as I flashed them the peace sign.

Tonight as I was washing the dishes I started thinking about this and that, because let's face it, washing dishes is a mindless chore,.My mind wandered here and there.One of the things that passed through my mind as I washed the dishes was the experience at the check point with the young man .I think what triggered my thought was Moe was watching one of the many new Libyan channels on TV . Some one on the talk show he was watching was continuously shouting out Allah Alkhbar every 2 minutes or so .One thought lead to another , and before I knew it , there I was in my mind back at the check point shouting out Allah Alkhbar.

This is ok , as I have been know to shout out Allah Alkhbar for no reason at all . The spirit moves me , so to say.But I remembered that out of all the cars before or after me , I was the only one that was stopped. I was the only one that was asked to shout out Allah Alkhbar .

Now why was that, I wondered? Was it because Moe and I smiled at him and none of the other people had acknowledged him , let alone smiled?Did he take that as a opening to joke around with some one that seemed friendly ?Did he do it because I was obviously a foreigner ? I don't wear a head scarf or the Hijab as so many other western women do here in Libya.I am Muslim but I don't cover.But Mohamed was in the car with me and he is Libyan and obviously a Muslim .

I do look " foreign" with my blond hair showing . Was that why he did it ? To remind me that this was an Islamic country?I don't know what he was thinking when he asked me to shout out Allah Alkhbar.But what if .... I was , oh say , a ambassador ,or a volunteer doctor here to help the many wondered people , or any one of the many foreign workers that are still here in Libya working , the majority of whom are Christian .How would one of them had felt if they had been demanded to shout out Allah Alkhbar ? Would they have understood that this has become the rallying battle cry of this revolution? Would they have understood that they were not necessarily being singled out because they were foreigners?

Maybe he just felt enthusiastic that day and wanted to share his enthusiasm with some one, and I was the chosen person .He might have just wanted to see what I would say or do ? Who knows ? But maybe in the future it would be more appropriate by those that man the check points, to just accept the peace sign from those that flash it and not demand an Allah Alkhbar from people that don't voluntary shout it out ?Does any one see my point ? I do know that this is an Islamic country, but we do have many non Muslims that work and live here that might feel intimidated by this " mandatory " Allah Alkhbar .

???

2011-09-21T07:07:00.000+02:00

What was I thinking ????

Recently we had a visitor who was talking to Moe about a new political party being formed here in Libya. He was terribly excited by the process. He said he knew this one and he knew that one . That they were on the NTC ( National Transitional Council) now and would be members of this new political party. I didn't hear the name of the party ,so don't ask me what it was ,when he told Moe. I then told him about the petition being drawn up for Libyan women asking for their rights in the new Libya . He just ignored me . He is married with 2 daughters , one foreign daughter in law, and 4 grand daughters. I thought he would like to pass the message on to them.

I then asked him would he please speak to one or more of them for me about my group to help raise awareness of our situation as Foreign Spouses of Libyans and our great need for rights here in Libya.He looked at me like I was insane . He thought for a second or two before he replied to my request. He then practically shouted at me saying that, " THE MEN IN LIBYA NEEDED THEIR RIGHTS FIRST ". Before women and a bunch of foreigners is what he meant to say but didn't , at least that is the way I interpreted it . Stupid me !!! WHAT WAS I THINKING ??? Women having rights in Libya ? I sincerely hope the other men in his new party don't feel the way he does. The more things change , the more they stay the same it seems.Sigh!

This song " De Do Do Do,De Da Da Da Da" by The Police has several verses which I feels is relevant to Libyan politics right now . What do you think?

Poets, priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
And no one’s jamming their transmission
’cos when their eloquence escapes you
Their logic ties you up and rapes you

De do do do, de da da da
Is all I want to say to you
De do do do, de da da da
Their innocence will pull me through
De do do do, de da da da
Is all I want to say to you
De do do do, de da da da
They’re meaningless and all that’s true.

Time To Recover

2011-09-18T06:30:00.000+02:00

Friday Moe and I went to visit his brother in his new house .Several of Moe's sisters and their kids were there as well , so it was a lovely way to spend the day.Another brother in law dropped by as well . The house is really nice . It is like a American open plan house with a great kitchen loaded with all the latest appliances , like a dishwasher. Can you tell I am a little envious ?LOL!My sister in law seemed bent on stuffing us all from the minute we arrived there , to the minute we left.I think we must have gained 10 kilos.

We sat around and talked while keeping a sharp eye out on the tv for the latest news on the offensive in Sirte and Bani Walid.The news bulletins kept us on the edge of our seats at times , others we were ready to throw things at the tv. As we talked the conversation moved , as it seems to do these days , to our individual war experiences. We were divided into groups of : those of us who stayed the entire war here in Libya, to those of us that stayed for just part of the war ,moving to another country until the rebels/ freedom fighters came to Tripoli. Some of us live outside of Libya , so their stories, while different from most of ours, they were no less traumatic.But we all had a story.

As more relatives arrived the furniture had to be moved around to accommodate a larger sitting plan.My sister in law had picked up a large wooden table to move. Since it was entirely too heavy for her to lift alone , it slipped from her hands and crashed to the marble floor with a loud bang.In that instant you could tell which ones of us had lived abroad, which ones of us had stayed for part of the war , and which ones of us had stayed the entire war .The ones who lived abroad said: WOW .The ones who stayed for part of the war jumped and looked around . The others like Moe and I that had stayed the entire war screamed and jumped , terrified that somehow we were under attack as irrational as that seemed.

On the way home , we got caught up in a road block were the guys manning it were in a celebratory mood.They were firing off round after round of missiles and bullets from guns until the air was fogged with smoke.We were close to the actions . It was intimidatingly frightening as it was the first time in 7 months Moe and I had been out of the Condo after dark #1, and #2 all those bullets have to come down somewhere and we were way too close for comfort.This went on for about 5 minutes that seemed like an hour to us as we waited . I am so glade I wasn't driving .Our niece that was in the car with us was totally stressed out from it as she had already been caught in a gun battle once before during the war in a car.It brought back scary memories for her and her dad who was our driver.

I had thought that I was ok . That our experiences from the war were mild. I realized this wasn't the case once we had arrived home and I had time to reflect on the days activities. Thinking back, I realized that I had become nervous when the front door of my brother in laws house was left open. The door was only a few meters from the outer door in the wall that surrounds the property. Way too close to just leave open like that where anyone could walk in freely. The incident with the falling table , the drive home after dark , and the open door. I guess it will take time to recover .

Painting by : Tilly Strauss , " Easter Greetings".

Mad and Sad

2011-09-16T03:59:00.000+02:00

Disclaimer notice ..... abuse towards women happens all over the world , in all countries, in all social classes,in all ethnic divisions, in all religions, and anything else I left out here..... JUST TO BE FAIR TO ALL CONCERNED . So , don't write me any nasty fan mail ,ok?

I feel so much like the character in the above cartoon. I want to scream . I want to pull out some ones hair and it isn't mine you can bet on that .Maybe even commit murder, death ,kill to some one . I am so mad I think my blood pressure is in the quadruple digits by now and I have had several hours to cool off .Talked with a friend tonight . She visited a friend of ours that neither one of us has seen in a while due to the war.She found our friend in bad shape both physically and mentally.A extremely long complicated story that I won't tell here , is that she is being mentally and physically abused by her " loving " husband.

She adored this man . She often would speak of him in glowing , loving terms and now she is very ill he is mistreating her.AND GETTING BY WITH IT ! Why is he getting by with this ? Because she is a foreigner for one thing and hasn't any legal rights here in Libya. Two , she is a foreigner and doesn't have any family here to protect her like a Libyan woman would .Even if ( this for those of you that are thinking this, or will say it )our USA embassy was open, they would not help her unless she came to them willingly and wanted to go home to the USA ,leaving her husband .She is unable to go to the police.Too afraid to tell anyone in case her husband finds out she has told anyone. If I and/or my friends try to help her , he can legally keep us from seeing or talking to her .

This is not ,and I am sure it won't be the last, case of abuse to a foreign wife of a Libyan here in Libya.I've said this before and I will say it again, we are natural targets for bully's that some of us unknowingly marry.Usually we met our husbands in the US while he is a student studying for a degree. Things are wonderful . We marry and are mostly happy while we are living in the USA.Then we will probably move to Libya for any variety of reasons only to find that loving man we so admired and adored has changed into a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde personality. What are we to do about it now that we are isolated from all our friends and family ? The people we would normally turn to for help?Our husbands families in many cases won't hear of their son being a bad person.It must be all in our minds .So forget that .His friends that were your friends when you were all in the USA together as students? Ha !No , there is no where to turn for help and more than likely no one wants to be involved on your problems.

I have heard of women locked into their homes allowed to see or talk to no one , including their husbands family.Women beaten so badly they were hospitalized. Women locked into rooms in the garden of their own home and not allowed out . Women starved .Women not allowed to speak their native tongue ever.Women denied basic medical care.And on and on the list grows . AND THERE IS NO ONE THEY CAN TURN TO HELP THEM. They are isolated , alone ,scared ,terrorized,depressed, close to insane from abuse. I AM NOT SAYING THIS HAPPENS TO ALL FOREIGN WOMEN that marry Libyans and come here to live , for many of us are happy and well treated. But for it to happen at all is one too many women.I am so sad and depressed right now.My poor friend .

History Check

2011-09-13T04:53:00.001+02:00

This week end we had visitors . The first to come over was Moe's younger brother and his family. They had returned from Tunis where they had been for the last 2 months. We were so glade to see one another we couldn't stop hugging .We were the survivors of war . Each one of us had a story we wanted to tell .And we all wanted to them at the same time ,lol.We looked like grinning idiots . We couldn't stop grinning. If we weren't grinning , then one or more of us were crying about some one or something that had happened.They stayed for a long time but the time just flew by on wings.So nice to see them all safe and healthy.

Then yesterday Moe's sister that lives here , her husband , and their daughter with her son , along with the sister that lives in the US came over to visit.The sister here we hadn't seen in months . Her husband had been quite ill during the war. How great it was to see him back on his feet again.I hadn't met the little baby before I am ashamed to say . He isn't exactly a baby any more . He will be 2 years old next month ,lol. He is a doll . OMG , if he were a girl , how beautiful would he be?Our sister that lives in the US hasn't been home in a year .It was so good to see her again . She had stories also of how the war had affected her in the US, watching it from afar. How hard it had been for the Libyans in the States to watch on tv. She brought news of our daughters there in America.

Again we all had stories we had to share with one another . Moe and I were retelling stories that we had told the day before .They were just as traumatic .We learned that a nephew had been fighting with rebels ( have to stop calling them that but don't have another name for them yet.) and he had left his family worried sick for months with no news of him. I don't know how his mother lived through such an ordeal .I would have been insane.Another nephew in the family had been a on the ground reporter here. Getting the news out to news networks so the outside world would know what was happening here. A niece had been shot in her leg sitting in her yard. She was ok .Many others in the family that had been arrested for siding with the rebels where finally released from prison.. Our daughter was very involved in America with aid and volunteer services to come here to help the people.On and on the news of this one and that one came out . Eight months of no communications with one another , for if the phones were working , you couldn't talk freely on them . They were monitored of course. With no gasoline for the cars , there was no visiting . We shed years of rage with laughter of relief that we had made it through the war alive and well.

We all had questions concerning the future .Worries that all could turn out to be not what it seemed , after all Ghadaffy had started out ok , hadn't he?Why had this happened and not that?What next?How long did we estimate it would take to turn the country around.Of course we all had an opinion on that subject .Arm chair rulers , we had became.But the visits were good . A renewal of our family bonds .

We heard over and over not only from family, but friends as well, that it was safe to go out .Drive around in the city and the small town were we live. I had deep reserves about leaving the safety of our home until yesterday. Since yesterday was the first day in who knows when we hadn't heard gunfire somewhere near our home, Moe and I decided to go out yesterday morning . Just here in Tagura were we used to drive around .

Our favorite coffee shop was now open and ready for us . There were "oh how are you's" all around .People smiling and congratulations to one another for the Eid and the revolution's success was heard at all the different places we stopped.Again , everyone wanted to tell you their story

The most remarkable thing for me, was that every single place I looked , I saw people smiling uncontrollably .The young guys on guard duty at road blocks shouting out hello's and smiling like the Cheshire cat from ear to ear.Everyone flashing the peace sign that has taken the place of the up raised fist of the old regime.Out bursts of " ALLAH AKBAR" ( God is Great) in loud proud voices, zinging through the air like darts.Flags , hats , stickers on cars , buildings and walls with "Libya Hurra " ( Free Libya) written on them everywhere.And more smiling happy faces telling you that it was all worth it .I will be forever grateful to have been a part of this,the birth of a new nation. Amazing times . An awesome time for the Libyan people that have never know what freedom feels like before now. Imagine that if you can . Freedom ,how can you describe such a thing?

Painting by Tilly Strauss: " Divorce Document #4 ".

Janis Joplin Said....

2011-09-13T00:03:00.000+02:00

Janis Joplin said ,
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now."
in her song " Me And Bobby McGee".

The Libyan people have stood up against all odds and said we count. We're mad and we are fighting back. We want our freedom.They stood up to a dictator and demanded their freedom . You know what ? They got it when everyone said it will never happen . No way you can fight Ghadaffy and ever win.Take your pick of reasons from below:

He will never let you win .
He is too strong.
You aren't strong enough.
You will never get any support.
The people are too afraid to stand up for their rights.
Everyone is afraid to fight.

Good thing Ben Ghazi didn't listen to any of those things huh ?

I cam here to Libya the 1st time when I was a idealistic , naive ,pregnant 20 year old that knew nothing about birthing no babies. I came here after having worked for 3 years supporting myself , help supporting my mother. and supporting my new husband until he got his work permit in the US after we married.

I was fully independent.I was hard working. I believed in equality.I was used to thinking for myself and making my own decisions.I thought that would continue to happen when we moved to Libya.I was so excited to come to Libya and be a trail blazer , a pioneer .

Mohamed's family was a good family.They were a well educated family that had traveled much and seen the world outside of Libya. They were as open minded as a Libyan family could possibly be in 1972. They welcomed me with open arms and treated me as a daughter of the family. I called Mohamed's parents Bouy ( my father) and his mother , Ommy ( my mother) and I meant it .I felt they were my parents. I also called his sisters and brothers mine as well . I still do to this day.I am honored they call me sister.

We get along like a family , some times it's onions , sometimes it honey.There were times when it was mostly onions with Mohamed when we lived here in Libya. I had no one to help me . No one had my back. There wasn't any one to turn to .I felt so alone.I never want another wife to come here and feel like that because she discovered she didn't have any rights like I did.

Those of us (the foreign spouses) that live in Libya, have lived in Libya , or even just visited Libya all have a story.Usually one that ends like this , I had / have no rights because I am a foreigner. If you never lived here or even visited and you are a foreign spouse, it was for one reason I am sure , the lack of security,the lack of freedom of your rights. Correct?.Now , for the 1st time we have a chance to change that.Change it for ourselves , for our daughters , for our grandchildren from our daughters that married non Libyan men.We can give them what no one gave us ... a chance to have freedom ,equality , and rights. A voice for future non Libyan women married to Libyan men , not just ourselves.This may be the ONLY time in history that this will happen.Don't miss out on your destiny.Your voice counts . Let's hear it.Tell the NTC what you want , your equal rights as a foreign spouse married to a Libyan.

Equal Rights For Foreign Spouses Of Libyans

A Chance For A Better Future?

2011-09-09T01:13:00.000+02:00

If you are a non-Libyan married to a Libyan and wish to join a facebook group that was formed to write a petition, to be presented to the NTC asking for you to have the right to own property in Libya , inherit from your spouse , and many other rights , click here for the page. You must have a facebook account to see the page.

Now , if you ARE LIBYAN WOMAN or know one , here is a facebook page FOR YOU to join . A petition will be drawn up to be presented to the NTC asking them for greater representation of Libyan women in the NTC and future governmental institutions.Here again , you must have a facebook account to join.

These are exciting times here in Libya. Hopes are high with our expectations of the new government. Let's pray they don't let us down .

A Picture From Last Trip To Beauty Street

2011-09-08T03:17:00.000+02:00

Moe and I on our last outing this past winter to " Beauty Street" where there are are roles upon roles of wholesale shops with beauty products for sale.

Todays News

2011-09-08T01:30:00.000+02:00

Thank you to all that wrote to me !!!Today is a much better day then yesterday . I got a little more sleep . Seems I am not the only one with this problem. Others I know and have talked with are having a similar problem.We have also had attention deficit problems off and on. Hard to concentrate on simple things like watching an entire movie or reading books . Some can do one but not the other , while others of us can do all , or neither .Stress. But it is getting better .

I got my 1st instant message on my phone from a friend tonight . The 1st since I think May?So great to send a ms, stating what you want to say and not having to make conversation when you are really not in the mood or busy .Loving it.

The neighborhood shooter is still at large, shooting at will . We never see him . He is like a ghost. We certainly can hear him though. I wish they would catch him soon. We thought they might have this morning when we heard a lot of gunfire but since he has been walking around tonight and shooting , I guess they didn't. Oh well , soon ???

My daughter started a Facebook page for me and my cause. I am so proud of her for her support !It is for the organization of a legal petition to present to the NTC eventually when the new Libyan constitution is drawn up asking for certain rights for (women like me ) foreign spouses/ and children of Libyans married to foreign spouses . I will post the page for you to sign up and /or just show your support even if you are not in either of these categories , later on when I have the page ip here .So exciting to think that after 40 years, the many sacrifices made to live here and raise a family, may actually be acknowledged by giving me and so many others like me, rights that most Libyans take for granted in Libya. I have high hopes that the NTC will add this new law to the new constitution when drafted and ratified.

What NOW ?

2011-09-07T06:24:00.000+02:00

Just re read what I wrote in the previous post . Please excuse the glaring mistakes. It was 4 a.m. when I wrote and believe it or not , proof read it. BUT now , I am completely unable to access ANY of my email addresses or Facebook. It says "temporary moved to here" but won't open up to any web page . Now what ? Are we going back to no internet service or is this a "thing" ?

Snapped @ 60

2011-09-07T05:53:00.001+02:00

Yesterday ( the 6th of Sept. ) was my 60th birthday.This has never been a problem before for me , birthdays. In fact I have almost always looked forward to birthdays. I have never lied about my age . I mean why bother and what is the point ?It is just silly to lie about how old you are , I think .But now I am 60 years old and I do mean old ! I am a senor citizen now . OMG !!! Although my youngest daughter in the States tells me I have until the age of 62 , maybe even 65 until I am officially a senor citizen. I think she was just trying to cheer me up.I am falling apart at a most alarming rate here.The first two months of the war I was house bound due to my arthritic knees not allowing me to walk or stand more than a few minutes at a time.

Which in around about way brings me to another topic I have wanted to discuss and haven't got around to yet, the simple kindnesses Moe and I were shown by family , friends, neighbors , and strangers during the war.Our son and his family came to take care of us the 1st week I was crippled. That was a huge help as I couldn't walk at all then. Moe still needs his care even if I can't walk.Neighbors volunteered to take Moe shopping to stock up on meds and grocery's , even carrying the things up 4 flights of stairs at times for him as he is unable to do that anymore.

Even when gasoline became scarce they still continued to drive him here and there when I couldn't. One day there was a knock at the door.I opened it to find a neighbors son standing there smiling . He asked for my car keys. He said Aunty Haga (I have all sorts of names, lol ) I want to put 7 liters of gas into your car for you .I know you can't wait in line for 3 days for gas. He refused to let me pay for the gas which cost as much as gold.

I have a friend that lives near us and her husbands family has a thousand young guys in it that all have helped us in one way or another .One would take my car for me and wait in line with it to get gasoline. Sometimes it would take as long as 3 or 4 days of waiting in line . This would be during bombings by NATO over head , fighting in lines with guns and knives by others waiting as well. Very dangerous .My son called one day and asked me did we have gasoline in the car. It just so happened that we didn't and I had hesitated asking the boy to take the car to the gas station for me because it had become too dangerous, so I told me son no . He showed up in one hour with enough gas to fill the car up half way, for free.Now that is love !

Hot plates of food , loaves of bread would magically appear ,when bread was as hard to find as an Easter egg in a Easter egg hunt .Shop keepers would come to the car , take the grocery list and then bring it all to the car for us when neither one of us were able to walk far or for long.Knocks on the door at odd times but always just when we needed them with offers of help. I am not too sure how we would have made these months with out all these angels.

Now on to another topic I have wanted to talk about , prayer.I have always prayed, just haven't been very public about it as some people.When we moved here I noticed that many would say Alhumduliallah all the time, which means Thanks to God .Inshallah was said a lot too . That means God's Will o,r if God Wants It To Be.People said that whenever they were asked something , go somewhere , or do something. Other circumstances as well but I just can't think of examples right now.Well , even when I was a Christian I was never one of those people that went around yelling those sorts of things , so it was quite awkward when I started to doing it after becoming a Muslim.Now I do it all the time and am not even aware of say them. Khadijateri and I were talking the other day about saying Alhumduliallah so much since the war started ,that hardly a sentence is stared without starting with it .

Now that I have rambled on here , I will get to the praying part ;before I sleep I say my prayers.Afterwords I give thanks . I list them on my fingers ;thank you God for the electricity today , for our good health , for the help of our friends and family. For they and their families good health . Thank You for our safety .For our families and friends safety .Thank You for our home . Thank You for our car. Thank You for Your forgiveness, and so on , until I fall asleep.Even when I lie down for a nap I say these prayers.The list got longer as the war wore on. Sometimes during the day I will say thanks to God for the sunset , the food we ate,the gentle cooling breeze that came in off the sea when the electric was off. The large and the small things are all worth saying thank you to God .And you know what ? He acknowledges them all .

I said a lot of prayers the day our oldest son was kidnapped and sent to Sirt to be a human shield.We had been trying to contact our son for a few days . Phone contact was off and on about this time , so we marked up the fact that we had been unable to reach him due to poor phone service when we were unable to reach him for several days . Then we called our daughter in law to ask her to have him call us . She hemmed and hawed about having him call us until after 5 days I penned her down about why he hadn't called us back and the story came out in her tears.He had rented a taxi to drive from some people after the foreign company he worked for left town when the war started . People still needed to work so they could eat. They have 2 little boys to feed and cloth. It was about this time Ghadffy forces was stopping people on the streets , in their cars, and picking them up . Mostly young men but sometimes other older people as well. We had all heard about these things happening.This is what had happened to our son as he drove his taxi. Long story short , he was sent to Sirt to act as a human shield for Ghadffy ,but since our son has worked all over Libya over the years,he knows the most unlikely people in the oddest out of the way places.He managed to get help from some people he found in Sirt that he knew and escape from there after almost 10 days of being missing.There was a point when I thought , due to mis-communication with Moe, that someone was on their way to our house to tell us he was dead.I think that was one of the worst days of my life.He returned home to us safe and sound .Alhumduliallah !By the way , that is a very difficult word to spell.

Now , during these last almost 8 months, I have had good days and bad days , Moe as well .We decided early on that it was just easier to have the good days rather than surfer through bad days , so we tried to see the bright side to most things , laugh off others ,kiss one another a lot , say I love for no reason at all ,as often as possible.Sometimes we did this through a veil of tears but we managed to stay positive as much as possible in the circumstances.It has helped us get through some very bad times.

That is until yesterday. I haven't been able to get my required 25 hours of sleep the last few days and I am not a very nice person with out them .Yesterday I woke up in a foul mood and it just got worse as the day and news wore on.Everything was awful.Moe went into town and came back with tales of a ghost town . Shops mostly closed.The few that were open were nude of merchandise.No coffee cafes open . Now , you know things are bad when they are closed. People here live on caffeine.Moe said that the trash that had been colected had been dumped on the beach here in Tagura. On THE BEACH , I SAY! Don't know if that is a temporay thing or what, and yes I KNOW there are a lot of things that need doing .I KNOW everything can't all get done at once , they need time.But the beach ?

Then I talked to my daughter in law.She told me that she and our son had driven by the wadi ( dry river ) near their house yesterday . There had been intense fighting there by both sides during the battle for Bab Al Azizia and Tripoli.Evidently many people were shot and killed at this place. Up to at least 150 or 200 people killed there.The Ghadffy people had set up an ambush check point disguised as the rebels by this wadi. As the people came to them , they were executed , thrown over the barrier wall of the wadi to hide them from the next victims as they came up to the check point.So , for the last week or so , in 105+ heat these bodies of victims have been lying in the wadi dead, waiting for some one to show them some decent kindness and humanity .Let's just forget about human kindness and decency here for a minute , or how un-religious this is , or disrespectful, but rather on disease spreading. Rats everywhere,wild dogs , flies breeding on these bodies. Where is WHO when you need them?A lot to do huh? My daughter in law said the smell from decomposing bodies that were no longer in the wadi was so strong they couldn't get within 2 blocks of the wadi.She was in tears as she described the scene on the phone.

We went to bed with a heavy heart last night after hearing that news.The stalemate in Bani Walid left us to wonder.So, off to bed we went , only to be woken up by loud explosions outside our condo in the little ally below us.Gunshots , cannon fire,geletine, running feet ,whistling ,signaling some one else doing the same things several streets over from us.Then, a car driving up, talking to them , a confederate, confirming a plan of action. More explosions . Strangely enough no one from any of the many check points up and down the main road that is situated at the end of the ally came running up to try to stop them . To keep the peace , as is their duty .Not one of the 7 policemen that live in the condos went running out to uphold the peace at 3 a.m. No one , that is until 45 minutes well after the entire incident was over and the shooters went home.THEN , everyone came running out to see what was going on , after the fact.There went any thought of sleep for the rest of the night.Interestingly enough, the NTC had sent a message out to everyone yesterday ... AGAIN...telling people to turn in their guns and NOT to shoot them AT ALL .Uh huh .

Then ..... as if all that was enough to put me in a foul mood, I turned 60 today ! AND......the news of a invisible (evidently) convoy of cars that managed to some how elude all the AWAK airplanes flying over Libya, and every single spy satellite that is focused on Libya at the moment .Now that is just AMAZING ! I mean NATO was able to see a tank parked underneath a tree from how many thousands of feet up in the air, but a convoy of cars driving across the empty Sahara desert was an impossibility , I guess .Not ONLY did the convoy drive across the empty Libyan Sahara desert from the north of Libya to the south of Libya ( which is a considerable distance), BUT.....it then crossed the Libyan boarded into Niger , illegally .It continued to drive almost entire length of Niger , to the capital .Word has it ,the convoy of invisible cars has moved onto a more southernerly town that is closer to the boarder of ANOTHER country , Bakino Faso.This convoy of invisible cars is suspected of having " senor officials " of the Ghadffy regime , possibly the man his self , but no one thought to stop them .I was told they couldn't because they didn't have a reason . What about searching for a possible war criminal wanted by the Hague? Or ascertaining that the cars were not snuggling hundreds of millions of cash and gold stolen from the Libyan people out of the country?

So , I just snapped today. Gone are all the long months of working so hard to stay positive and cheerful .I am a senor citizen and the world has gone to hell in a hand basket. There, I said it.I am feed up with it all.I am so ready to go shopping , visit my friends ( IF they are still talking to me after today) , go for a drive in the country side , have a decent nights sleep uninterrupted by gun fire, bombs or explosions of any sort.I want to drive to a gas station and say , fill her up please.I want to feel safe again. So far , 60 really sucks.

English "Crazy" Language

2011-09-03T05:29:00.000+02:00

Time to have a laugh or two .......

I think a retired English teacher was bored.

THIS IS GREAT! Read all the way to the end.

This took a lot of work to put together!

You think English is easy??

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UPthe leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UPis used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may windUP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP,

for now my time is UP,

so........it is time to shut UP!

Past, Present, And The Future?

2011-09-03T04:21:00.000+02:00

Things are still very much a toss up here in Libya. I hear this one or that one expressing their concerns.There are worries about Ghadffy and his sons still being at larger.Anger that his son Hannibal was , as some insist , "allowed" to escape to Algeria .Gunfire is heard sporadically too often. Too many guns out in all the wrong hands.This talk of tribes, I have lived here off and on for 40 years and this is the first time I have ever heard that word incorporated into conversations.

Insecurity over the future making many anxious .Will we become like Iraq ? Car bombs, tribal insurgency's,Islamic extremist ,guerrilla warfare from Ghadffy loyalist are some of the whispers I hear in the wind.If asked most will say that in Tripoli things are improving day by day.People are working hard to get things back to normal.But no one remembers what that is any more.

Everyone wants things back to normal for all of Libya. All of Libya ,the people will tell you this is one Libya , for all Libyans , no matter which way their loyalties lie.But underlying all this is the fear that foreign troops will try to come in to Libya and take over as in Iraq.That would be a fatal mistake , as it would unite and mobilize the population as nothing else has been able to up to this point ,against any foreign intervention.

People want to believe that things will be different.They want to trust things will change.They want a chance for democracy to work here in Libya.They need time. They need education as to how theses things are done . They need their expats to come home and help make a difference with the skills and knowledge they have gained living abroad.Libya is a beautiful country, but it needs everything , most especially , love and care.The Libyan people ,despite the atrocities we hear about in the news , are a generous people.Libya can become a great country if give half a chance.

Painting by : L.C.Neil " Dream"

Congratulations For Eid Al Fitr 2011

2011-09-02T02:03:00.000+02:00

The most powerful weapon against evil is the power of prayer. Eid Mabrook to all . May your prayers be answered and Allah bless you with peace.

A Day Of Tears

2011-09-01T08:32:00.000+02:00

I think it was the 22nd of August ,the day after the "rebels" had come to Tripoli. It was a hot summers day outside and again the electricity was out.Moe and I decided that we would just stay in bed since it was way too hot to do anything around the house. We had been up all night long glued to the TV watching all the news channels .Al Jezeera, BBC, and CNN gave us blow by blow details of what was happening all around Tripoli , all but the news we so wanted to hear , that Ghadffy had been captured along with his sons.

We could hear in the distance car horns honking , gun fire hammering away at who knew what.On and on this continued through out the morning making sleep difficult as our imagination ran wild with all sorts of conjectures.After several hours of trying and failing to find sleep , we got up. I decided I would risk being possibly shot by sitting next to the living room balcony doors that over looked the main road that runs in front of the Condo building.It was apparent that there were many cars and trucks to-ing and fro-ing but to what purpose I couldn't tell.Did this extra activity mean Ghadffy was caught?

Going crazy sitting there staring out the doors at the street below, my mind went over the many things we ,our friends and family here had witnessed or experienced the last 6 months.I thought back to the time when Ghadffy promised to go from street to street, house to house, room to room searching for "rats" vowing to kill all he found.Our blood ran cold for we knew he would do as promised.He did in Misarata ,destroying the once lovely city.Thank God it didn't happen to Tripoli I thought selfishly.I remembered sneaking out on the balcony at 4a.m.one time to hang the laundry to dry because it was quite in the neighborhood. I had assumed all were sleeping and it to be safe.Well , we all know what happens when you assume things.I was incorrect in thinking I would have that time all to myself.I heard scuffling noises in the ally below our condo.Hidden by the hanging sheets I looked over them to see 20 mercenaries marching in the alley below with walky talky's carrying guns , knives , and machetes.I backed back into the condo as quietly as I was able, collapsing onto the couch shaking uncontrollably, wondering how long it would be before they would come to break down our door? That was when Moe and I started to stay up all night , every night, so that we would be dressed and fully alert in case something like that did ever happen. Better to be awake than sleepy if your door is kicked in at 4a.m.In any case, that night we where saved.No one came to our door. We heard that they went further down our street to other families ;that they kicked in their doors killing some , taking away others.Then there was the time we had a shoot out in broad daylight one day in the street below. I was almost hit by a bullet from a shooter in the street below.One of the worse nights was the night we heard the distinctive creaking-squeaking sounds of tanks rolling down the tiny alley behind our condo.We sat in the dark waiting for the tanks to fire on the condo building.Luckily for us , they kept rolling on down the street to close it off , not to fire on us.

Many more things rushed through my mind that day as I sat looking out those doors.My mind turned once again to Ghadffy and all the sorrow and suffering he had caused our family. He had arrested Mohamed's father , tortured him , publicly humiliated him on state TV, forcing him to confessing to crimes he never committed,and caused him to go blind in one eye while in prison due to no medical treatment.He had a hit put out on Moe in the early 1980's that thankfully was unsuccessful .Tried to kidnap our children at one point when we lived in the US in order to get at Moe.That didn't work out either.The list just went on.

For more than 40 years that man had controlled our lives in one way or another.Maybe the honking horns outside meant he had been captured?I noticed that my nose was dripping and that I had begun to cry at some point and wasn't even aware that I was crying.I cried thinking that this evil was over and he could never hurt anyone else again.I felt so odd thinking that, no more worry about what you said to whom, where , or when.How a life so free will be here in Libya. How wonderful.How liberating!

Then I thought of all the exiled Libyans outside of Libya , how they must be feeling right at that moment.All the times they had said if only he were gne . If only things would change , I want to go home but can't live in Libya as long as Ghadffy is in power.Well, he was finally gone.Their diaspora had an end at last. So I sat and thought.I cried for them , that they were not in Libya to live this magnificent moment in history. I was so sad for them being on the outside looking in on this long awaited day none of us thought would ever come.I cried because Mohamed's generous and loving father didn't live to enjoy this day.I cried because I thought it was all over.

So , Moe and I went back to bed to sleep off the euphoria in the heat not really caring that it was melting inside the condo because we were so happy .Several hours later the lights came on . We rushed to turn on the TV news channels to see if our assumptions were true.All our hopes came crashing down. Ghadffy was still at large , free to wreck havoc in our lives, unchecked .The tears flowed down both our checks this time in unstoppable despair .Maybe tomorrow we will wake up to learn Ghadffy has been arrested and is in custody.Maybe.

The sadist thing was when our oldest grandson who just turned 4 years old tried to describe the fighting that took place around his home last week to me when he came to wish us Happy Eid yesterday.The sounds of machine guns , the smoke in the air that burned his little nose, the fire shooting in the sky from cannon fire, and the dead bodies he was able to see from his window, lying below in the street.No child should ever have such stories to tell .

Some Of This And Some Of That

2011-08-27T07:46:00.001+02:00

Lights back on finally at midnight here and blessed AC blasting away.It is now after dawn here in Tripoli , Saturday . I say Saturday because all day yesterday I thought it was Thursday .I opened my emails to find that so many of you have written comments of support in my crusade for the Libyan NTC to allow foreign spouses such as myself to have basic civil rights in the NEW LIBYA as they are calling it .There are so many foreign wives and even a couple of husbands that are left feeling like a orphaned child when it comes to having the simplest rights taken for granted in other places around the world.Please NTC, don't forget us, we so deserve them.

A few reply's to several people that sent comments......
Son of Zwara : I can so relate to what you said about spouses being able to inherit in the USA . Moe and I owned joint property( our home) , businesses , cars, and each had individual checking accounts when we lived there . All of which he could have inherited if I had died. Would be so nice to have that here in Libya too . Moe has had several strokes ,has a bad heart and I am his main care taker even though he is independent and is able to do most things on his own . I still have to be with him almost 24/7 to make sure he is ok .But I can't inherit our apartment if something , God forbids, happens to him. It would go to our children.It makes me feel very insecure knowing that.You and your wife are so lucky to have one another.Moe and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in June.

Khedegah: Ah, my dear one , I have had you in my prayers almost daily and have wondered how you were.So glade to hear from you at long last . Happy to learn you are safe and sound in Ireland.I am deeply saddened to learn of the loss of loved ones in your family here in Libya and will say prayers for them .Zlitan had it hard and our hearts go out to them .I hope you will be able to get your apartment back when you come back to Misurata. It was hit so hard and now parts of Tripoli are starting to remind me of that poor city. I still can't access your blog .Take care little one .

twilatexas : You know you are my favorite oldest niece and I love you too so much !!!!

Anonymous: Thank you so much for your kind thoughts . All the best to you Monica and Massud .

Pinky Tabor: Have thought of you and the kids so many times these last 6 months. Wondering if you were still there in the Philippines or had moved back here to Libya. If your family here were ok .So happy to hear from you ! Blessings little mother.

ibeebarbie: Believe it it not thoughts of you and Amira have entertained me many a time these last few months. I can't wait to get caught up and have continued access to the net to read what the two of you have been up to lately.Thank you for your prayers. The country needs them desperately

Now I have a few things to say about whats been going on here the last couple of days.My heart is breaking . I didn't think it was possible,for I had thought it was shattered beyond breaking anymore.I am seeing on CNN and on Al Jezzera things I dreaded and prayed would never come to pass.These are scary days here in Tripoli.I pray for wisdom ,intelligence,patience for the new government and the people.A swift resolution for an end to this conflict .I pray that this NEW LIBYA will become a shinning example for others to follow, but in order for that to happen it must have laws that are followed by all and not slip back into the old bad habits of he who has the most " wasta"( influence) wins.Or he who has the most guns wins.Keep us in your prayers.Counting our blessings , OTE.

Villa On The Med In Tagura,Libya

2011-08-26T02:31:00.001+02:00

Hello ! It was last February when I was able to post on my blog . A lot has happened as you may have heard,the war , which still rages on here in Tripoli and other places in Libya .I just wanted to say that Moe and I are both well and doing fine.Our son and his family are also well and safe.Moe's family that are still here in Libya are doing well. We are all safe ,thanks to God.

We had all sorts of adventures as you can imagine, but for right now I just wanted to thank all of you that wrote, sending your love ,prayers ,and well wishes to us and our family here.Truly the Grace of God has been with us,our family,friends, and wonderful neighbors here in Tripoli. A special prayer goes out to the families that have not been as blessed as we.The families that have lost loved ones ,been displaced, or made homeless.

A special thanks to NATO and their support. And a IMPORTANT message to the new Libyan National Transitional Council ..... please ,please when a new constitution is drafted remember the foreign spouses of Libyans such as my many friends and myself . Please afford us the rights to own our property , to inherit from our spouses ( our homes that many times we helped build or sacrificed much to help our husbands buy ,are many times NOT given to the surviving spouse due to foreign citizenship. ), allow us to have the right to own our own businesses legally ,to travel with our multi-national children with out having spousal permission to leave the country,and the right to open our own banking account without spousal approval.

I have lived here off and on for last 40 years .I currently have lived in Libya for 21 years and have not left the country in 19 years. I have born 4 children ,three of which were born on Libyan soil. One child is buried here in Libya.I think I have more than earned the right to be granted these simple civil rights.Please NTC don't forget the silent ones like my friends and I .

My Love Affair

2011-02-12T07:12:00.000+02:00

Like most things in my life , I was either too late, or too early . Or I was too distracted by life to really pay attention at the time of whatever it was to notice, and now I play catch up . I know I have talked about Led Zeppelin many times here, but once again I am tugged by their shear genius . I sit now listening to their classics and am so totally blown away by them .I have a love affair with them , a shame they don't know it ,lol.

The scale and innovation of what they wrote is equal with many classical composers .Their skill is WOWERFUL! The guitar rifts, the drums, the harmony, the verses ,the power, the emotions .I could go on but I will save you from that torture .Sometimes when I listen to them , I am so completely amazed by what they accomplished when I stop to consider that they were on heavy duty drugs or alcohol much of the time in that period of their life.There are many bands and artist that are equally talented but no one on this scale in my opinion .

The members of the band have gone on to do other things to much acclaim as individuals , or as in John Bonham's case , died .No mater what their endeavors may have been , they embody success .I love them.Once again , I give you a video from them to judge for yourself what you think.Enjoy!

Name This Tune

2011-02-09T03:10:00.000+02:00

I have a song that I am gonna write . I keep hearing it on every ones lips these days . It goes something like this ...." When the money comes , we're gonna ( insert what ever it is you want or need here) , when the money comes . You continue singing like that until you run out of all the things you need or want...... WHEN THE MONEY COMES ! I think it will go platinum in one weeks time , don't you ? Ha,ha,ha !

Back On The Map

2011-02-09T02:38:00.000+02:00

Here is an exert from a letter to my sister. She was wondering if we had fallen off the face of the map :

Well , I guess I should have had a V8 huh ? Ok , so , today, after MUCH , and I do mean MUCH , To-ing and Fro-ing by Moe and I to the local phone office, and after they gave us our own service phone number ( LOL , I think they were secretly afraid we would pitch a tent in the phone company lobby ) to call them and report that the phone STILL didn't work , we got it fixed! Can I hear a YEAH ?I am still in shock .

It got so that when Moe would call them to tell them the phone was still out , they recognized his voice and didn't even bother to ask him his name , lol .Whatever , I am just glade the thing works !!!! And the internet is working too ! ALL AT THE SAME TIME ! Now how convenient ( BTW ... is it just me or do you think that word is spelled weird too ?) is that ? SSSSOOOOOO ... here I am , live and in person ! We are doing well here , aside from a hiatus from all modern modes of communications .Hope the rest of you are all doing well too.

We had some rain here last week and looks as if more might be on it's way to us here in Tripoli. It all started on Groundhog Day night , Feb.2 . Rained almost non stop for 5 unheard of days.You can imagine the flooding in a dessert city .Although , I have to say , for the most part , the water has drained away pretty fast in most places. Then you have the other places where it is still a inland sea ,lol . Thank goodness for the new paved roads. At least on the paved roads , you know what is underneath the water .And the public works department has done a very good job of trying to keep the drains in the roads that have them , clear and functioning .Hats off to those gays !

Tin Cans And String

2011-01-29T04:18:00.001+02:00

Sometimes I feel as if I am still using tin cans and string to communicate.The internet is SSSSOOO SLOW recently. The land line phone is back to being staticy these past few months. Thank goodness Khadijateri over rode my objections and got me a mobile(cell) for my birthday last year, otherwise a normal conversation would seem like I am talking with tin cans ; like when I was a little kid. It could just be water in the lines.We did have rain a while back.Well , I better post this while the internet is working fast .

Pot Of Gold At Rainbows End

2011-01-29T03:28:00.000+02:00

The other day Moe and I was sitting in the car on the beach here in front of our house waiting for a very important phone call. That day we had clouds and some light rain off and on. It started to sprinkling on us as we sat waiting for his phone call .All of the sudden a rainbow shot down RIGHT in front of our car out of the sky, onto the beach, almost touching the car's bumper in fact. It was awesome to see! At that EXACT moment, Moe's phone rang. It was the call he had been waiting for. It brought us good fortune. So, I guess it is true, what they say about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Strange thing, as Moe said goodbye to his caller, the rainbow disappeared into thin air.

There's This Woman....

2011-01-27T03:31:00.000+02:00

There is this woman that is sneaking around in my house. I keep seeing her off and on . I am only telling you this in case you see her, to beware.Click here to read all about her.

Things That Make You Say ....HUM !

2011-01-26T15:27:00.000+02:00

This year we will experience 4 unusual dates....
1/1/11,
1/11/11,
11/1/11,
11/11/11 ....

NOW figure this out.... Take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be THIS year and it WILL EQUAL TO 111.
60+51 = 111!

How cool Is that!?!?!?

News Update From The Condo

2011-01-26T15:06:00.000+02:00

Despite all that seems to be going on in this part of the world , thank you God , things are pretty calm and peaceful here in Libya.So far no shortages of anything that is imported .It's just the same ole same ole here . It's all good .

Moe and I have had a rather lazy month . Hanging out around the apartment , going on slow leisurely drives around town now and then .Watching movies on TV and in general doing nothing much other than what is urgent , like washing some clean underwear when needed , lol .A vacation of sorts .

I decided to begin the new year in a more relaxed way than last year , so took a vacation off from the computer , Facebook , the blog, and sending emails , flooding my poor family and friends mail boxes . At first the withdraw was hard .I felt like I was cheating on my computer by watching so much TV .Then with each passing day it became easier , until I almost had to force myself to turn on the computer today to write to my family and you .

So what have all of you been up to this year ? Is it going well for you ?Has 2011 lived up to expectations so far ?Have you started that new diet yet? Began the new exercise regime you talked about doing this year ?Cleaned out the hall closet ? All those 101 things we all say we will do in a new year and STILL never get around to doing ? Write and let us know what has happened in your life so far this year .Peace out , OTE

Painting by L.C.Neil, "Peace"

Happy New Years To All

2011-01-01T03:47:00.000+02:00

As soft as silk.......

White as milk..........

Sweet as honey.......

And full of money !

Happy 2011!

Senior Texting Code

2010-12-30T05:17:00.000+02:00

Since seniors are texting and tweeting more and more there appears to be a need for a STC (Senior Texting Code). If you qualify for Senior Discounts this is the code for you.

ATD ~ At The Doctor's

BFF ~ Best Friend Farted

BTW ~ Bring The Wheelchair

BYOT ~ Bring Your Own Teeth

CBM ~ Covered By Medicare

CUATSC ~ See You At The Senior Center

FWB ~ Friend With Beta Blockers

FWIW ~ Forgot Where I Was

FYI ~ Found Your Insulin

GGPBL ~ Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!

GHA ~ Got Heartburn Again

IMHO ~ Is My Hearing-Aid On?

LMDO ~ Laughing My Dentures Out

LOL ~ Living On Lipitor

LWO ~ Lawrence Welk's On

OMMR ~ On My Massage Recliner

OMSG ~ Oh My! Sorry, Gas!

ROFL-CGU ~ Rolling On The Floor Laughing-Can't Get Up

SGGP ~ Sorry, Gotta Go Poop

TTYL ~ Talk To You Louder

WAITT ~ Who Am I Talking To

WTP ~ Where's The Prunes?

WWNO ~ Walker Wheels Need Oil

GGLKI ~ Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking In

NCDCWPH ~ Never confuse denture cream with preparation H

on the edge of something

Check Santa Clause Out

Militias Wield Real Power On Libya's Streets

Militias wield real power on Libya's streets

Let It Snow !

In Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll

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Published: Deember 17, 2011

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Someone Like You

Happy Eid Adha 2011

Shoot Out At Tripoli Hospital On Halloween ?

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