Syria's Uncontested UNHRC Seat

Bashar al-Assad does not seem to mind the well-earned obloquy with which he is regarded. After all, it is not Muslim states, and his neighbours in the Middle East who are looking at him askance, naming him now for what he has always represented; a repressive, murderous tyrant. It is only Europe and North America, perhaps the United Nations marginally. But he has his friends and supporters.

Turkey, as intermediary, merely requests that Syria not be so embarrassingly blatant about sending in those Alawite-majority militias so capable of brutally dispatching protesters. Political repression is being condemned by European countries, but Middle Eastern governments know what is involved here; a pathology of unrest spread like a virus among ingrates.

It will only be when civil war can no longer be averted that Syria will demonstrate exactly what it is capable of. Behind the scenes people are being abducted, towns emptied of males older than 15 and spirited away; women raped, children and the elderly used as target practise for army marksmen; instilling fear is practical and useful in stifling dissent.

Libya's situation, where government installations are being bombed by NATO, is not quite so feasible for transference to Syria. That kind of scenario would simply represent as too volatile, a slow-spreading fire of animosity toward the interference of the West in Arab affairs. The Arab League would certainly look upon any such move as insufferably arrogant and divisive.

Libya is seen as a pariah state. Syria, practising now what Libya pioneered so recently, remains in high regard. The 53 Asian group choice among India, Indonesia and the Philippines includes Syria to sit on the UN's Human Rights Council. After all, if Libya could be represented on the Council, and Iran be considered for placement on the UN's Rights of Women's group, why not Syria on the UNHRC?

Yes, the United States led a censure proposal at the UNHRC, mildly condemning Syria, which Arab states abstained from while Russia and China campaigned against the resolution, but that embarrassing bit in the proposal making mention of Syria's candidacy for the Council while making use of lethal force against its people, was cut.

So Syria has been "unequivocally condemned" for killings and arrests of protesters. Isn't that a relief? Now that's out of the way, matters can move forward and Syria, along with the three other nominated Asian countries can sit in comfort on the Human Rights Council. Sit in judgement on others whom they may accuse of violations of human rights.

Israel comes quickly to mind. For no other country in the world is recognized as so manifestly involved in human rights abuses as the one country in the Middle East where all religions and ethnic groups are granted citizenship and given the guarantee of free access to justice under the law of the land.

Less Super Power?

There has long been universal agreement that the United States of America is the last one standing in the ring of global power as the single remaining global powerhouse. The Cold War lapsed into history leaving the Soviet Union dissolved and one super power only. Cause for celebration since the United States is and always has been, despite its blighted errors, been on the side of the angels.

That would be the angels of Freedom and Human Rights and Justice.

While there may be many other countries and nations whose track record and whose support of those inalienable virtues in a restive and volatile world are undeniable, they lack the military, social, political and diplomatic clout that the United States has honed over the years.

China and India have larger populations by far, but they haven't the additional indispensable ingredients: advanced technologies, an omnivorous economy, diplomatic outreach, political stability, an large and educated population and historical antecedents.

Most other advanced countries of the world are endowed with some, if not many of the requisite virtues, social-political traits, stability and financial clout, but they are runners-up to the throne that the U.S. occupies.

China, India, Brazil and Russia may continue to grow their bona fides and their entitlements and no one can read the future, but there is no real reason to believe that the U.S. is really when all is said and experienced, prepared to surrender itself to second-string status.

France has demonstrated a newly-realized aptitude to take the place of the United States in initiating military solutions to seemingly intractable political-social situations abroad, as has done Britain, and to a lesser, more restrained degree, Germany. They all have rather insalubrious past histories demonstrative of a serious fall from grace.

Japan too abandoned its reach toward a world power status and became instead an economic power.

The ebb and flow of history, the interconnectedness of world powers, of politics and finances with global corporate interests have resulted in a softening of former antipathies and a general consensus toward social and political union.

And up the centre aisle has marched the backwater nations of the Muslim world; Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, led by the Arab nations and taunted by Iran.

The coalition of disaster-nations like North Korea, Burma, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan in destabilizing the world order and the orderly world that would prefer to live and let live, innovate and entrench, enjoy resource and build financial empires march us toward future uncertainty.

The pretenders to the throne of super-powerdom will remain pretenders - or willing assistants.

In the final analysis it seems clear that the United States, once again institutionally allergic to global power, and prepared to sit back and allow working coalitions to lead, will be given little choice but to take up the reins and direction of the world order.

It will become, increasingly, an imperative its leaders may not be capable of avoiding.

American Intelligence; Unparallelled

"For decades, U.S. intelligence agencies have routinely shared critical information with the covert operations organizations of such allied countries as the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and other NATO powers. However, these “old-line” powers do not possess the deep resources of human intelligence (“humintel”) required for understanding the new Middle East, U.S. State Department analyst Lazlo Toth told Fox News Reporters yesterday. “What is more, many of those countries have agendas that are in fact at odds with the development of new, fragile democratic movements in the Middle East. The old European powers, the Israelis, none of them have a vital agenda in the emergence of popular-driven government. In fact, some of them are actively opposed to it. So we realized that we needed to find new friends in the region. And now we have found them.”

Toth explained that U.S. intelligence agencies have for the past 12 months been working with new security partners: the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. “This once-controversial group, which long ago renounced the use of force, has an incredibly far-ranging web of connections,” Toth said. “Their assets extend through every Middle Eastern country, a number of nations in Asia, and even extend to a network of campus student organizations in the U.S. They have so much to offer us, now that we have won their trust,” Toth said. “It took time for us to convince some of the 'Old Guard' inside our intel agencies that we have no long-term quarrel with the Brothers,” Toth told Fox reporters. “But this administration has been unrelenting about this, making a number of transfers and forced retirements in order to clear away irrational opposition to our new approach.”

The Muslim Brotherhood shares America's concern with human rights, democratic governance, and the need for values-based political activism, Toth said. “We just needed to strongly motivate some of our senior staff in order to make them see it.” Posted by Roland Shirk on April 1, 2011 4:01 PM |on the Jihad Watch web site http://www.jihadwatch.org

And then there is another reality, one that appears to have bypassed U.S. Intelligence, but one that is shared by many writers who are knowledgeable about the Muslim Brotherhood, their very long history in Egypt, their agenda, and their spread throughout the world. Take, for example, the Canadian Muslim scholar Tarek Fatah and what he has to say about the Muslim Brotherhood in his book Chasing a Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State:

From India to Indonesia and Morocco to Malaysia, the Muslim Brotherhood ideology of jihad and Islamic supremacy is being challenged by fellow Muslims. However, in Canada, the United States, and the West it seems the Muslim Brotherhood and its Pakistani wing, the Jamaat-e-Islami of Abul Ala Maudoodi, dominate the Muslim narrative. The few voices that do stand up to the open exhibition of jihadi ideology in Canada and the United States face serious obstacles. For example, two Muslim experts who were hired by the US TV network PBS to advise it on a series on Islam ensured that Canadian filmmaker Martyn Burke's documentary Islam vs. Islamists was excluded. It was later widely reported that the two knew the very Islamist groups that were the subject of the documentary investigation. It took months of lobbying by the producer, including a viewing for members of the US Congress, to compel PBS to lift what amounted to a covert ban.

But it appears that although Muslims themselves who are aware of the Brotherhood agenda, through familiarity with their insiders are not taken seriously by those in the U.S. who claim they know better. After all, the Muslim Brotherhood have taken great pains to cultivate the impression that they share "America's concern for human rights, democratic governance and the need for values-based political activism". It's just that inconvenient little fact that's being overlooked that it is their particular view of values and the political activism that they support; quite unlike, in fact, that of the Americans.

The contacts within the Muslim Brotherhood of which U.S. State Department Toth is so proud of having disarmed and cultivated represent a cleverly integrated suspicion-disabling group whose agenda is clear to some, though not to those whom Toth represents: "Today's movement for an Islamic theocracy is structured around the creation of an Islamic State based on the works of Abul Ala Maudoodi and Hassan al-Banna of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood." (Tarek Fatah)

There is also the opinion of an authoritative scholar on Middle Eastern affairs, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics who wrote in an article titled "The Left and the Jihad", speaking of political accommodation between Islamism and leftist groups:

"The latter show every indication of appearing to see some combination of al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and (not least) Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as exemplifying a new form of international anti-imperialism that matches - even completes - their own historic project. This putative combined movement may be in the eyes of such leftist groups and intellectual trends hampered by "false consciousness", but this does not compromise the impulse to "objectively" support or at least indulge them.

And, it would appear, under the new accommodating spirit of the American administration led by President Barack Obama that is the unifying principle; taking from the left's accommodation of political Islamism and reaching an accord with the very groups whose hidden agenda, and sometimes not-so-hidden agenda, is to collapse the values and priorities, political structure and justice system of the Western world, into a Sharia-led global caliphate; by any means and stealth as good as any.

"We - the befuddled infidels - talk airily about "reforming" Islam. But what if the reform has already taken place and jihadism is it? What if the long percolation of Islam through Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian revolution, and contemporary Western-promoted whining over grievances such as "colonialism" is the reform? Mark Steyn, America Alone

Muslim victimhood crying aloud for understanding and commitment to their cause on the part of the West's judicial and political and intelligence establishment. Permitting their supporters to feel superior to others who view the poor misunderstood victims of Islamophobia as harbouring an agenda whose fulfilment will make victims of them, while allowing the triumph of political Islamism through both violent and disarmingly diplomatic overtures to the better natures of those in the West who do not want to be labelled anti-Islam.

In his book Descent Into Chaos, Ahmed Rashid documents compellingly just how stupidly blind the United States and Britain and their allies have been in going into Afghanistan, in being manipulated by Afghans and by Pakistan, allowing themselves to be used, bled of treasury and personnel, while sectarian, tribal and inter-country intrigues, drawing in Iran, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with Russia and nearby Uzbekistan have proceeded in a drawn-out, endless bloody conflict.

"Afghanistan had always tried to balance regional powers, taking money from the Soviets and the United States and balancing the demands of both Iran and Pakistan. However, Mohammed Daud overrode Afghanistan's balancing act and tilted decisively toward the Soviets, thereby increasing the influence of the two rival communist parties Khalq (the Masses) and Parcham (the Flag). Daud's tilt led to a crackdown on the country's nascent Islamic fundamentalist movement, which in order to avoid arrest fled across the border to Pakistan in 1975. The Afghan Islamists were linked with the Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan's Jamiat-e-Islami, who gave them sanctuary."

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood, throughout its long history has worked tirelessly to spread their gospel of violent jihad to overthrow moderate Islam, and it is their inspiration along with that of the Saudi's Wahhabist school of fundamentalist Islam that has promoted the concept of an re-awakening among the world's Muslims, to submit themselves entirely to Islam, to reject any accommodation with forbidden Western values. And, as Ahmed Rashid demonstrates, the Muslim Brotherhood remains an inspiring jihadist Islamist force to this day, despite its clever manoeuvres to intellectually disarm its detractors, those who are determined to look behind their veil of sinister intent:

Seizing the opportunity to weaken India, the ISI encouraged young Kashmiris to come to Pakistan for training. The ISI first trained secular and nationalist Kashmiri groups but quickly switched its support to Kashmiri Islamic groups, who were linked to Pakistan's own Islamic parties. These Kashmiris drew their inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood and described their struggle as an Islamic war of national liberation, but not as a jihad. However, in 1995-1996, fearing that the insurgency was petering out, the ISI shifted its support again - this time to Pakistani and Kashmiri extremist groups belonging to the Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam, which believed in a jihad to defeat India and "Islamize" Kashmir. It was precisely at this juncture that the ISI also switched its support in Afghanistan from Gulbuddin Hikmetyar to the Deobandi-inspired Taliban. This decision had less to do with religion than with the fact that in both Kashmir and Afghanistan such groups were more extreme in their hatred for India and more willing to do the ISI's bidding. the ISI soon shifted many of the Kashmiri training camps to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

This just happens to be the very same tail-that-wags-the-dog ISI, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate that has been infiltrated through-and-through with Islamists that influences whatever the government of Pakistan has done, and with whom the United States intelligence services have traditionally done business with.

"Washington had lavishly aided Pakistan's military, and U.S. legislators now asked where were the results of that aid. Between 2002 and 2007, the Bush administration had provided Pakistan with $3.5 billion in aid, more than half of that for the military. Between 2002 and 2005 the military had received another $3.6 billion in payments for use of its facilities and services by the U.S. Defence Department, while the United States had forgiven Pakistani debt worth over $3.0 billion. The CIA had paid large secret sums to the ISI in order to improve its performance and provide reward money for catching al-Qaeda leaders. the army received another $30 to $40 million to improve border security. Washington provided for the computerization of all international passenger traffic at the country's airports, the creation of an air wing for the army to monitor FATA, the building of access roads in FATA* and police training in several fields, including crime scene analysis and a centralized fingerprint ID system. Officially by 2007, the United States had provided $10 billion in aid to Islamabad, and unofficially the figure was much higher, yet FATA and indeed Pakistan were now greater threats than ever before. With terrorism on the increase, U.S. legislators were asking the Bush administration where the money had gone. *Federally Administered Tribal Areas Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos

And now, in 2011, with a new Democratic American administration replacing the Republican-Bush era, legislators can look around them at the accomplishments of the State Department, the CIA, the diplomatic and the military-industrial machinery, and ask, even while their country is in the deep dudgeon of monumental debt, what has been achieved by liberally sprinkling their treasury funds around the Middle East and the Muslim world, to achieve a detente, and to better understand the Islamist agenda.

Quite outstanding intelligence work there. Understandable why they would not seek the assistance of countries whose intelligence networks traditionally and conventionally they had sought. It might be too embarrassing to admit how utterly gulled they have been.

Unparalleled professionalism.

What If?

It's not all that far a stretch of probability. It happened in Afghanistan with the U.S. and Pakistan conspiring to aid the mujahadeen, training and arming them to confront Soviet forces in the invasion of Afghanistan. And those mujahadeen formed the core of the Taliban which then ruled Afghanistan when the Soviet troops left.

And from among the mujahadeen another corps was formed, that of al-Qaeda. The alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda was a natural one.

And the flaming enmity of al-Qaeda toward the West and specifically the United States became the most evident turning point of the Islamist revival. Which has since spread incorrigibly throughout the Muslim world. The Islamists have succeeded in overturning moderate Islam to reflect a fundamentalist, fanatic version of Islam which conducted its own internal war within the ummah.

Islamists who fought in Afghanistan were recruited from all over the Muslim and Arab world. Many of them returned to their source, and one of those sources was eastern Libya. In 2009 a Canadian intelligence report described eastern Libya as an "epicentre of Islamist extremism", where "extremist cells" were well represented.

Canada's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre identified "several Islamist insurgent groups" based in mosques in Benghazi, urging its members to fight in Iraq. They are suspected of having infiltrated the ranks of the rebel forces now battling Moammar Gadhafi's forces. And, like a nightmare recurring, the United States, Britain , France and Qatar are considering arming the rebels.

A recently-convened conference of 40 governments and international bodies reached agreement to continue the NATO-led aerial bombing of Libyan forces, hoping to force Gadhafi to comply with the United Nations resolution to end its violence against its civilians. The conflict in Libya is between the West and the East of the country; a tribal conflict.

In many of the cities that rebound from government control to rebel occupation and then back again, there are citizens who battle on the government side, against the rebel forces. This is a country that has been riven by clan warfare and tribal antipathies, a reflection of what exists in every Arab and Muslim country globally.

It is into this melee that the West has intervened, focusing on the presence of a maniacal tyrant determined to continue his personal ownership of a country, violating the human rights of his own exploited people, celebrating his ownership of the proceeds of the country's natural resources. In the West this is considered moral anathema; in the Middle East it reflects tradition.

International aid agencies are on the scene, concerned that the conflict has cut off medical supplies, water, electricity and food to countless civilians. The focus of concern from within the international community and the reason for their involvement has been the security and safety of the civilian population. But the civilian population appears fractionated by loyalties, further complicating matters.

And through all of this, while the West and their Arab and African state allies remain anxious to have Western powers involved and commit to what they will not, Moammar Gadhafi keeps insisting that he is concerned for his peoples' welfare: "Stop your brutal and unjust attack on our country ... Hundreds of Libyans are being killed because of this bombardment. Massacres are being mercilessly committed against the Libyan people."

And on their part, the spokesmen for the rebels deny al-Qaeda links, despite damning admissions seen elsewhere. And the head of the U.S. European Command informs the U.S. Senate that American intelligence on rebel forces, while demonstrating some involvement of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, they are lacking "detail sufficient to say there is a significant al-Qaeda presence."

Just Too Precious

What a coalition this is! Western powers and a few Arab countries united in opposition to Moammar Gadhafi's determination to remain in power and to punish those of his people with the temerity to oppose his continued rule. The united front is anything but united. It is fractious and querulous.

While France and Britain took the initiative with huge umbrage at the prospect of Gadhafi targeting his own people with wild brutality, insisting that the United Nations pass a resolution for a no-fly zone as a humanitarian necessity, they rely on the fire-power of the United States.

The United States, willing enough to be involved - but unwilling this time around to be the presumptive leader where it remains a target of Arab loathing for interfering in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries in its zeal to protect its oil interests - awaits leadership from elsewhere.

Standing ready and eager to hand that leadership over to France, to Britain, to NATO. But NATO's participation requires all 28 of its members to agree. And Turkey, the sole Muslim member of NATO, is abrasively resistant to NATO's involvement in the battering and bombing of Libya.

Along with China and Russia, both of whom have their own internal dissents to cope with. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has described the Allied bombing of Libya's military as "indiscriminate force", as "a medieval call for a crusade". No one has mentioned Russia's brutal incursion into Georgia and its support of South Ossetia.

China for its part, describes the air strikes on Libya as comparable to "the blood-soaked tempests that Iraq has undergone for eight years and the unspeakable suffering of its people". No one has made any mention of the blood-soaked tempests in Tibet and the unspeakable suffering of the Tibetans with the loss of their culture, their heritage, their lives. And perhaps that is just as well.

The Arab League has now back-tracked on its complaints that in calling for the United Nations to authorize a no-fly zone, it had no intention of seeing civilians killed - as they contend was occurring under the coalition attacks. It has now re-affirmed its commitment to ensuring that mad-dog Gadhafi no longer wages war on his own.

Although that sentiment has not yet been communicated to Moammar Gadhafi and his forces are busily engaged doing just that.

Italy now threatens to take back control of its air bases. Italy doesn't mind being militarily subservient and at the service of the United States' forces, but it takes umbrage at being used and taken-for-granted by France and by Great Britain. Italy foresees the feasibility of NATO taking charge in the absence of American leadership.

Germany, along with Turkey, has no wish to see NATO involved. That would force Berlin to backtrack on its refusal to become involved in the entire inconvenient mess.

And so, what's the agenda? Protection of the rebels? The long shilly-shallying until the Arab League decided to back a no-fly option gave the Gadhafi regime ample opportunity to strengthen and consolidate its resources, and weaken the initial successful advance of the rebels.

What happens if there is a stand-off between the government forces and the rebels? And a division of the country ensues? Leaving Gadhafi in control of the north, the rebels the south. That would result in a waiting game. The coalition will not be around forever. And the battle will re-commence.

And here's a funny thing; the coalition heads of state all favour the elimination of Moammar Gadhafi. That he flee with his family, which he is not inclined to do, or that he be 'eliminated', which is to say dispatched, or rather assassinated, or killed by bombing. The bombing of his compound did not succeed in dispatching him.

And while the heads of state anticipate his removal by means fair and foul, it is their military chiefs who want no part of anything like that, considering it to be an 'unwise' move, and not within their mandate.

Isn't that just too precious?

Straining The Imagination

France and Britain agitated forcefully for intervention in Libya. Italy offered its air bases. The United States remained hesitant of embroiling itself once again in a conflict pitting it against a Muslim country. It is heavily mired down in Afghanistan and still involved in Iraq. Both of which arenas have garnered it hostility in the Arab world, as an occupier of Arab land. All Western countries are garishly brushed with the imperialist colours of petroleum greed.

Moammar Gadhafi went a bit too far in his arrogant incitement of fear and misgivings threatening the rebels in his country, promising that they would not live to see the light of another day once his troops retook the cities the rebels had taken. His is famously a scorched-earth mentality. The rebels had full knowledge of his vicious intentions, which spurred them on to battle more deliriously determinedly with the intention of giving as good as they prepared themselves to get.

They were, all the while, awaiting rescue by the West. Their initial assertions that they wanted a safe sky and nothing more. That they would not tolerate foreign boots on their ground, in anticipation that they would lose their sovereignty by an influx of troops they had no stomach to receive. The pride in their capabilities as a fighting force to the fore. And the Arab and Muslim disgust with the presence of U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan is manifest and deeply entrenched.

But when there was no response reflecting the intention to act on their behalf, only brave words of inspiration that the world was watching and hoping for their victory, matched by government forces managing to take the upper hand, desperation overcame caution. Still, not much could be done...until the Gulf States managed to convince the Arab League that a no-fly zone was desperately needed lest Gadhafi, who always offended everyone, succeed in obliterating the rebel alliance in a sea of blood.

The League took it upon itself to authorize the United Nations to take all necessary measures. Which went quite a bit further, as it happened than merely instituting a no-fly zone, which in and of itself would have been a declaration of war. The resolution that was passed by a vote of 10, with no dissenting votes, just 5 abstentions, went further, much further. Including a no-drive zone, a maritime exclusion zone, and the disruption of official Libyan communications.

Then began the almost immediate response with French and British jets bombing Libyan armoured vehicles and artillery, and U.S. missiles being fired from offshore ships in the Mediterranean. And then the Arab League suffering grave misgivings, denying that this was what they wanted when they asked the UN to intervene. It seems unlikely that any of the Arab states, like Egypt or Saudi Arabia will become involved.

Particularly with their own problems of protests against their traditional rule with their populations seeking more freedoms and fewer authoritarian governments. And with that unrest within their own borders, concerns that their having become involved in the affairs of another Arab country while affairs within their own have not been settled they would not want to be viewed as becoming increasingly involved with the United States' interests.

In short, it is the typical Arab situation, waffling and weaving and wavering; exhorting on the one hand, denying on the other. And the Arab League has no wish to become involved in a situation whose longevity no one can predict. With a possibility that tribal antipathies within Libya could even divide the country and a prolonged civil war ensue. Which would trap Western powers already committed to the rebel cause.

Who knows, in the end, whether the bloody tyrant that will be replaced will have his place taken by someone equally horrendous, or, straining the imagination, even worse? And who might have imagined all this occurring when the new year of 2011 bade adieu to 2010?

Taking Sides

"The sun has risen and the darkness has been removed and the truth will prevail."

The truth is, in this instance of time and place which will eventually take its part in history that a devious, implacable and vicious tyrant has been destroying the lives of his own people, those who have lived for 42 years under his rule as the "King of Africa". These are the people who appear to have determined for themselves that they will no longer live as crushed and repressed people without the civilizing and needful benefits of basic human rights.

Their revolt, inspired by liberty-inspired revolutionary zeal expressed by other rebels in other countries of the near-geography, in Africa and in the Middle East, has resulted in a punitive back-lash that has raised the indignant ire of the world. Of the West, and of some parts of the Arab and Muslim world, in any event. Some of whose governments were prepared to take action beyond expressing dismay and anger.

The 'leader' of the free world, the United States of America, imperiously instructed Moammar Gadhafi that he must 'step down' instanter. That message was just as imperiously flicked off the radar. Watch me and learn by my example, he effectively informed the world. And the rebels whose amazingly audacious and determined blow-back against the tyrant in capturing and holding Benghzi and other Libyan cities, kept advancing.

But then the metal gauntlet of Gadhafi's brutal and stifling reign was thrown down and the rebels finally understood that their assembled arms and defences were like children's toys against the armoured vehicles, gun ships, artillery, mechanized armoured vehicles, warplanes of the government forces. The civil war that ensued saw a speedy retreat, and desperate refugees trying to escape the war zones.

And then, fearful Libyans who gathered themselves about television sets, witnessed the United Nations Security Council voting through resolution 1973 and hope blazed anew. Their tyrant proclaimed the resolution "invalid", yet on the strength of the potential, assured the world that a ceasefire was in effect, while his troops were ordered to strafe and bomb and kill civilians in the towns of Ajdabiya, Misratah, Zawiyah and Benghazi.

The rebels, attempting to defend Ajdabiya, had suffered many losses, and the euphoria that had fed their determination to succeed in the upheaval of the dark forces of tyranny turned to fear as they were pushed back to 140 kilometres from Benghazi, their main stronghold. And the government warplanes flying over Benghazi let loose their bombs there too. Promising to lethally punish all who were involved in the revolt.

"They said we just had to keep going until we got the no-fly zone. this week people started to think it would never come. I don't know how much longer we could have held on."

They did, and it did. And as the G8-member Paris meeting to discuss the situation and the members' involvement wound up, President Nicolas Sarkozy grimly asserted that France would intervene momentarily. Then twenty French military planes bombed military installations in Tripoli. The United Kingdom hot on their heels to do their part to neutralize government tanks and artillery.

Not to be undone the reluctant United States stated that cruise missiles aboard their ships in the Mediterranean were placed on active alert. Col. Gadhafi now knows of a certainty that his bluff has been called. He can no longer play for time. His ferocious onslaught of the rebels is being met and rebuffed and his armour destroyed.

This is meet and this is just. And then one's mind lingers on Darfur/Sudan, on Rwanda, on Iran; why here, not there?

Ten Agreeing, Five Abstaining

Credit is due Britain and France for their unwavering determination to halt Moammar Gadhafi's determination to brutally crush the opposition to his continued rule in Libya. Where other Arab and Muslim regimes have recognized the merit in their populations' clamour for liberty and human rights, and have begun to make accommodation to meet some of those demands as just, Libya's bloody-minded dictator is determined to wipe out his opposition.

And where, just a week earlier, that scenario was not really on the international radar with the determined rebels' advances into former Gadhafi strongholds, government forces with their vastly superior military war machines have turned the tide of rebellion. And Gadhafi boasts that another 48 hours will see the rebellion fully stifled, with those among the rebels who insist on holding their own to pay fully for their folly in opposing him.

While the world waited with bated breath for the new American administration to step firmly into the breach and commit to aiding the rebels not with brave words but with active commitment, nothing of the kind occurred. But Britain and France doggedly lobbied the United Nations, NATO and the European Union for consensus on a unified front to dislodge one of the world's most infamous tyrants from imposing any further carnage on his own people.

The Arab League finally succumbed and agreed, along with the Gulf States, that Gadhafi must be halted in his advance to obliterate any vestige of home-grown opposition. A no-fly zone would suit them just fine, they said, cautioning that they would never support a foreign army marching into Libya. A no-fly zone would, of necessity, require bombing raids against Libyan airfields and warplanes. And now, the Security Council, having finally debated the issue as Libyan government troops are marching toward Bengazhi, the die is cast.

Ten votes for a no-fly zone to be imposed over rebel-held areas of the country, with five abstentions. Paradoxically, Lebanon, with its place on the temporary Council, helped Britain and France circulate the resolution. Lebanon, high-jacked by its very own Islamist-jihad militia serving Iran and Syria as their proxies within that country, whose political wing has trumped despite having murdered a former prime minister of the country, has paradoxically committed to freeing Libya in essence, from a brutal tyrant.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's former deputy ambassador to the UN, now a passionately vocal voice in the effort to unseat Moammar Gadhafi, who commented that the "international community has to act in the next ten hours", must feel some measure of relief and satisfaction that finally his appeals have been answered.

All to the good, if words can be matched with action in good enough time to halt the troops advancing toward Benghazi before a slaughter ensues.

Paralyzed With Inaction

"People are dying out there. Gaddafi's forces have rockets and tanks."

What looked convincingly like a rag-tab rebel army coming together to oust a vicious dictator whose time had finally arrived, is now beginning to resemble the death throes of an embattled resistance. The government of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi's forces have artillery, tanks and helicopters that the rebel forces cannot match for efficacy.

The rebel groups remain unorganized, and disputes have arisen between them. Their confidence is sagging as they realize the extent to which their lesser-favoured armaments are not quite equal to the task of meeting government troops head on. They have been strafed and bombed and bloodied and chastened by the experience. The euphoria they have been living with is fading.

They are undisciplined and wasteful of the ammunition they have. They have managed, in small towns that they have occupied, to alienate the residents who were eager to welcome them. Alienated them by the rough antics and dangerous and unwarranted abuse of their weapons, firing into the air at all hours, disrupting normal life.

The rebels, although not professional soldiers, come from warrior Bedouin stock. Whose tribal loyalties and and traditional battles against one another are still ingrained in their psyches although they are now shopkeepers, teachers, gas station attendants, doctors. They have long since identified with a genuine need to free themselves from the shackles of their dictator. And are now collectively dedicated to that mission.

They do not have enough arms, rocket-propelled grenades, and equipment modern enough to match those of the government troops. Resupplying their front lines has been difficult. And leadership has been fragmented. In any case, the instant conscripts do not follow orders and respond enthusiastically but without discipline. The brigades they have formed fly by the seat of their pants.

They do know, however, that they need help. "People cannot run away, it's cordoned off. they cannot flee. All those who can fight are fighting, including teen-agers. Children and women are being hidden", is the message from Zawiyah's desperate scenes of government troops inflicting carnage. "Many buildings are completely destroyed, including hospitals, mosques, electricity lines and generators."

Where, they ask bitterly, is the West. Which mounts international podiums to speak of the unacceptability of the situation. Which speaks of no-fly zones, but does nothing. The rebels do want assistance. "We will complete our victory when we are afforded a no-fly zone. If there was also action to stop him from recruiting mercenaries, his end would come within hours", claimed Hafiz Ghoga, spokesman for the National Libyan Council.

France and England await the United Nations' decisive determination to act. The Security Council will not budge, however, with Russia and China insisting that Libya must itself solve its internal problems. The Arab League is set to meet to discuss the plea by the Gulf States that NATO and the UN declare a no-fly zone.

And the European Union countries fret about the growing emergency that will inevitably result in their receiving more refugees than they can comfortably absorb.

Will They Or Won't They?

It cannot always be up to the United States to talk tough and act tougher. Other countries must, on occasion, take the responsibility. Particularly when the U.S. is already embroiled in action in Iraq and Afghanistan that it finds itself unable to extract completely from. Involving massive treasury outlays and troop, munitions, strategic technological strikes and diplomatic investments.

Along with the simmering resentment and targeting that emanates from such mired-in situations. It has become famously unpopular in the Arab street.

Since Italy, France, Germany and Spain are the economic beneficiaries through importation of 90% of Libya's oil exports, and Britain enjoys a well-entrenched trade relationship with the country, it should logically be they who are front and centre of the situation to seize the moment and create a protective protocol in aid of the country's insurgents against their bloody dictator.

And, in point of fact, it appears that England and France are spear-heading just such a military protocol. Putting it together theoretically, mapping it out on paper. Just in case, the situation continues to escalate into something far more sinister and far-reaching than appears at the present time. Of course, formulating a plan to enact a no-fly zone is one thing, executing it is another, since neither of those two countries is prepared to act unless UN Security Council approval results.

Russia and China have already indicated they feel intervention is inappropriate. The Arab League has issued a warning not to intervene. And they most certainly have no interest in doing so themselves, since many of those same countries are facing their own inconvenient and vexing anti-regime protests. The Gulf States have indicated they would welcome the imposition of a no-fly zone in protection of Libya's civilian population. Turkey would not.

"There should be a demonstrable need that the whole world can see, there must be a clear legal basis for such a no-fly zone and there must be clear support from the region, from the Middle East region, from the North African region as well as from the people of Libya themselves." British Foreign Secretary William Hague

NATO might conceivably be persuaded to step in to promote what the UN Security Council has not. It is conducting air surveillance to determine the extent of Libya's air flights and their targets. The "gross and systematic" violations of human rights, the bombing of civilians, the employment of foreign mercenaries all present as more than adequate reason to invoke the UN's "responsibility to protect" intervention.

The Libyan rebel fighters have no wish for any foreign ground forces to come to their rescue and in the process take their thunder. They shudder at the very prospect of a foreign invasion of their country, viewing the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with great revulsion. They would appreciate, and have invited, a no-fly zone. Commitment to which would require foreign warplanes to target Libya's arsenal of warplanes and helicopters as well as air strips to neutralize their ability to bomb rebel-held towns.

And meanwhile, even while they are not committing themselves to any action, let alone support of the initiatives already taken by members of the European Union countries, the Obama administration, after its initial stern pronouncements of its expectations, have become suddenly mute and seemingly disinterested. They may become yet, however, involved in a more distant manner; jamming radio signals, airdropping supplies and weapons to the rebels.

NATO's future plans, meanwhile may also yet include "potential military options".

Austerity Protest Fever

A labour objector, protesting against the state government in Wisconsin attempting to deal with the large and mounting deficit posed himself on a ledge off the capital building in Madison. Threatening to jump in support of his impassioned position on the sanctity of labour contracts. People defending their turf, unwilling to give up anything in favour of the larger perspective of balancing the state's financial books.

As though a page was hastily torn out of recent history, emulating the frustrated agitation of the young Tunisian fruit-seller Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked an ever-growing protest in North Africa and the Middle East autocratic governments; against heartless bureaucratic interference in free enterprise.

Or, as though Americans were closely watching the violence of the belt-tightening protests in Greece.

However they have been inspired, American trade unionists will not stand for austerity measures hitting and belittling their entitlements. Even though, in the face of reasonable accommodation, those entitlements far surpass the wages and incidental entitlements - through successful union bargaining - that most Americans, particularly obviously, the unemployed can count on.

A recent poll showed, rather surprisingly, that most Americans - despite their straitened circumstances and the still-struggling economy that is wresting itself out of a deep depression, albeit with remaining high unemployment figures - support union collective bargaining entitlements. After all, the state succumbed to the rigorous bargaining set forth by the unions.

Except that the cumulative effects of all those weak-kneed legislators agreeing to some really exceptionally unworkable perquisites turned out to be unworkable. In that the state, even in good times, found it increasingly difficult to maintain contracts that had salaried workers paying little-to-nothing for their own medical and retirement plans.

It is also surprising to hear of the poll results, given that in the country many of the states pride themselves on being "right to work" states. Which, translated, means low-wage, non-unionized states, where union busting is a state sport, and workers take the jobs that are available and lump it, sans benefits.

President Barack Obama is squarely on the side of the unions, in a growing fever of blow-back across state lines. He would be, as a liberal-minded president, concerned with the state of his country's lower and middle classes, the working poor to the working entitled. Besides which, during his run for the presidency he had huge union support.

He could hardly now, in their time of need, desert those who had so enthusiastically supported him. And he has not. In his speeches while making note of the dire economic times and the circumstances that have impacted so deleteriously on state finances, the federal government has not been exempt from the same pressures.

"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon. We need to attract the best and brightest to public service. These times demand it", he emphasized in a televised address. But these times also demand stringent actions to tame the runaway deficit and resulting debt.

And it is not outside the realm of reasonability that the governor of Wisconsin has sought to have state government workers take on some of the responsibility for their own health care and pension benefits to more closely resemble a balanced picture. Limiting collective bargaining rights for most public employees represents a step back in time.

It's those who bargain with them who need a little more backbone. The need to do so should cut across party lines. The Democratic legislators who fled across state lines to stall the inevitable are only imperilling the financial fortunes of the state, aside from behaving in a childish, even illegitimate manner to protest what they hadn't the guts to pull off.

Clearly, the President of the United States is not prepared to pick up a picket sign and join the union protest. He took his own necessary steps not all that long ago. He recognized the need to reign in costs to the taxpayer in light of the fact that the taxpayer is already groaning under an unsupportable burden. Aside from the fact of huge unemployment.

"I recently froze the salaries of federal employees for two years. It wasn't something I wanted to do, but I did it because of the very tough fiscal situation we are in. I believe that everybody should be prepared to give up something in order to solve our budget challenges. I think most public servants agree with that. Democrats and Republicans agree with that."

But do they? Does he?

Photo: Ray Cunningham

Saving Libya

"The international community must send a very clear message: the killing of innocent civilians - the citizens of its own country - constitutes a gross violation of human rights and must carry serious consequences." Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Citizens of countries other than Libya are also at grave risk. Their governments are hastily assembling means and methods of delivering them to safety, away from strife-torn Libya. But there are citizens of African countries whose governments are not so well organized, have not the wherewithal to come to the aid of their citizens, and perhaps would not even if they could.

Col. Moammar Gadhafi has engaged thousands of Africans to come to Libya to work as labourers. He has, more latterly, brought in additional thousands of Africans soldiers as mercenaries, arming and instructing them to violently assist in putting down the insurrection that has broken out across the country.

Unlike Libyan soldiers who might hesitate to murder Libyans, the African mercenaries harbour no humanitarian scruples.

They have paid dearly for the reputation they swiftly gained by the use of extraordinary violence against Libyan protesters. Any that have been separated from their units have been summarily dispatched by angry Libyan mobs. But the larger fall-out for Africans in Libya is that innocent black African workers are being wrongly identified as mercenaries and they now fear for their lives.

On a larger, country-wide scale, anti-regime forces are meeting against pro-regime forces, but it can be assured that the former represent the majority. It is assumed that several thousand Libyans have already given up their lives in battling for the cause of their country's freedom from the tyrannical rule of Moammar Gadhafi, the King of Kings, their great revolutionary hero, a much-misunderstood figure of benevolent love for his people.

He has addressed his countrymen declaring his love for them and his bellicose determination to settle with blood the criminal acts of defiance on the part of regime protesters. He has urged Libyans to: "Feel at ease in the squares and the streets. Live the life of dignity. Moammar Gadhafi is one of you. Dance, sing, rejoice!".

They would dearly love to do all of these things, but without Moammar Gadhafi. Currently they are unable to dance, sing and rejoice, nor do they have much dignity in their desperate search for security from the threats imposed on their longevity by the helicopter gunships, warplanes and other similar threats mounted against them by their great benefactor.

Moreover, because the country is in a dreadful turmoil and chaos itself reigns comfortably along with the delusional Gadhafi, transportation has been hobbled. Desperate people willing to become refugees fleeing their country are finding it difficult to find refuge elsewhere. Worse, those undertaking the dangerous and arduous migration out of country are being set upon and robbed of their meager possessions.

And the UN's World Food Program is warning that the country's food supply chain has been disrupted and is "at risk of collapsing". Aid agencies fear that many Libyans are trapped, unable to travel, and unable to find sources of available food in a country that is a net food importer. People are fast running out of what little food they have, but fear exposing themselves to harm should they exit their homes.

All eyes have turned to the American President Barack Obama and his careful announcements. Registering that caution against the recent situation in Egypt which resolved relatively peacefully with a minimum of lives lost, and when the U.S. turned against a long-time ally, urging President Hosni Mubarak to leave office and depart his country.

Toward a long-time adversary, a known supporter of international terrorism, a human-rights abusing megalomaniac, the U.S. administration has made nothing resembling a direct call for the relinquishing of power by Moammar Gadhafi, even while Libya's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Shalgham, addressed that body, imploring of them "Please UN, save Libya.

The World Watches

The vicious rogue regimes of Africa and the Middle East that prey on their people and from time to time run amok destroying lives, are routinely condemned by the United Nations, the Security Council, Ban Ki-moon who theatrically wrings his hands in despair, and world leaders. The institution of the United Nations is geared and dedicated to upholding the rights of people to live decent and free lives under just administrations.

This they do through the many pronouncements that issue from that august body. When issues arise in places like Serbia-Croatia-Bosnia, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea and Libya, the United Nations condemns the violence and issues a call to immediate cessation of that violence and restoration of order and good government. The United Nations Human Rights Commission sits in judgement.

Overlooking the distracting events taking place in Sudan, Georgia, Belarus, Pakistan, Iran, and dedicating themselves to covering the backsides of those among them whose human rights violations are never to be impolitely mentioned, directing attention rather to the singular world state deserving of condemnation and the issuance of resolutions denouncing the human rights violations committed by Israel.

The African Union and those that represent North, South, West and East African regions do nothing to intervene when chaos and mass destruction ensues due to internal unrest in one country after another. The Arab League takes steps to temporarily expel one of its member-states when, for example, the Bad Boy of the Arab League bombs and strafes his people in Libya.

It is, in these circumstances, left to the members of the developed world community to step in. If they dare. If they dare do more than fulminate and denounce. Kuwait's invasion by Iraq represented a true anomaly in the organized response led by the United States, its Western supporters and members of the Arab League.

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, whose defenders are now isolated to the regimes in South America whose socialist ethos they all share, has been rejected by most of the world, and Britain wrings its conscience over having sold Libya the riot-control ammunition it now uses to shatter the lives of its people. Russia may also be slightly perturbed at its huge munitions sales in arms to Libya, but then perhaps not.

NATO, the European Union, the United States and Canada fret about their verbal responses to the carnage being played out in Libya as forces still loyal to Gadhafi slaughter those civilians still continuing their vocal opposition to his brutally tyrannical rule. What can they do other than that? Consider an invasion?

So that Africa and the Middle East can surmise that it is the country's oil resources they wish to capture and to colonize and enslave Libyans under European rule? Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain; in all those countries it is the people who have spoken and their rulers paid the price.

Libya's tyrant is not quite as obliging, intent on dredging the last drop of blood on the field of battle, intent on his lunatic will prevailing.

Events, Unfolding As They Will

Strange how things have worked out. George W. Bush was considered to be a bit of a roughneck, an anti-intellectual, not too bright as evidenced presumably by his mangled syntax. The current President of the United States represents the polar opposite; a smoothly cosmopolitan academic whose lyrical rhetoric transfixed his audience who worshiped him into the White House.

When the fearfully dramatic, horribly destructive 9-11 attacks occurred, the American administration was swift to arrange for flights from the United States to the Middle East - in skies that went into immediate lock-down - to spirit Saudi royals out of the U.S. With the knowledge that most of the attackers were Saudi nationals, as was Osama bin Laden. American corporate ties with Saudi Arabia overrode all other considerations.

The Bushes, father and son, both in the oil business doing work on behalf of corporate tycoons and Saudi royals whose close personal relationship with the Bush clan was semi-public knowledge, made their accommodation somehow with the fact that those two things intersected; lucrative oil transactions, and a Wahhabist ruling class that generously funded jihad.

In the new administration, with a president who felt it was his mission to mend relationships with the Muslim world, Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world on a trip to Cairo, offering a hand of friendship to Iran. Predictably, Iran shunned any offers of conciliation. American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan did not endear the U.S. to the Arab/Muslim world, though this was a situation President Obama inherited from his predecessor.

As an American, as an American President, Barack Obama could not but be committed to the wars that were handed over to him. Just as he had of necessity to take responsibility for the financial collapse that was inherited thanks in large part to the previous administrations' (including a Democratic one) laissez faire attitude toward accountability and responsibility.

What is telling at this point is the reaction of the diplomatic/academic/statesman/world leader to the events that have suddenly exploded on the world stage, with the meltdown of long-time Arab and Muslim, Middle East and North African traditional politics, from dictatorships to tyrannies, theocracies to monarchies - and they are not all quite the same thing.

Just as the situations in each of those countries; Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Syria and Iran is somewhat different by degree, by their discrete populations' levels of education, wealth and expectations. And by their regimes' level of permissible openness in accountability, the news media, religious dictates.

Barack Obama's - and by extension, America's - lacklustre reaction to situations they hardly know how to parse and react to, vacillating, attempting to bide time, ending up failing the test of reliability if not outright extension of loyalty to past long-time allies in the geography has vexed and dismayed Saudi Arabia. For it now understands that should finally its own population become sufficiently fed up with the status quo, its American ally would decamp.

All the trust and support emanating from the West toward the autocratic regimes of the Middle East have suddenly gushed down the drainpipe of events washing away the despotic and fear-driven restraints of the socially and politically oppressed. Wobbling on the edge of collapse are both the moderately autocratic regimes and the savagely repressive ones.

Europe is now concerned with the prospect not only of losing a goodly portion of its energy supplies, but also of becoming overrun by migrants desperate to escape the turmoil being unleashed in their countries of origin. The United States is facing the prospect of energy shortages reminiscent of what occurred in the mid-to-late 1970s when rationing became a near reality.

I Am Here in Tripoli

Not, however, for very much longer, to the absolute amazement of the world at large. The madly megalomaniacal monster that former U.S. President Ronald Regan dubbed a "mad dog" is on track to joining the only country in the world that will have him; Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez in 2009, standing alongside his historical soulmate declared: "we are writing new pages of history, we are here to change history, and create a new socialism, a new world."

Moammar Gadhafi may have videoed his presence in Tripoli, defying a sadly premature rumour he had fled his country, but it is yet early days in a swift-moving upheaval in a country that has been burdened for too many decades under his criminally eccentric rule. No country in the Middle East or Africa would be interested in giving him haven. The word has gone out for a complete repudiation of the mad man of Libya.

The head of the International Union of Islamic Scholars has issued a fatwa against the ravening lunatic still in control of Libya's armed forces. That religious edict called for action: "Whoever in the Libyan army is able to shoot a bullet at Mr. Gadhafi should do so". The Egyptian Islamic theologian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi also urged military personnel in Libya "not to obey orders to strike at your own people".

Gadhafi cunningly played Europe for fossil-fuelled favours to overlook his terrorist plagues. He has now declared his intention to put down the rebellion that young 'drug-addled Libyan men, whose services have been bought by mendacious Western interests to destabilize the country' have caused. He has declared protests of his rule are regarded as a capital offence, and all those involved would be punished by execution.

He has sent warplanes into the air to strafe protesters, and helicopter gunships to demonstrate just how serious he is about putting down the rebellion. He has brought in African mercenaries to do his bidding, to slaughter those who dare resist his ironclad rule. The mercenaries have no loyalty or compassion for the Libyan population, firing into crowds, funeral processions, peoples' homes.
Homes that are beginning to run low on food, potable water and medicine.

The Arab League has condemned Gadhafi's harsh crackdown, and taken steps to suspend Libya from the League. Col. Gadhafi's foreign ambassadors have begun to desert his leaking ship of state. "We are sure that what is going on now in Libya is crimes against humanity and crimes of war", Libya's deputy permanent representative to the UN declared before reporters in New York as his colleagues looked on tensely.

Libya's UN representative, Ibrahim O. Dabbashi, issued this statement: "We warn all African countries who are sending their soldiers to fight, to fight with Gadhafi, that they will not see their soldiers coming back". And interestingly enough there are reports that those despised African mercenaries whom protest groups have been able to capture and confine have been summarily dispatched by the mobs, to meet their maker.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, in Cairo to offer his country's effusive willingness to assist the new regime-in-the-making has characterized the events unfolding in Libya as "quite appalling". He informed the media that he has tasked his officials to investigate whether any British-made weapons were being used in the "vicious repression".

Well, likely, Mr. Prime Minister, since Britain had undertaken to train Libyan police in 2008/2009, providing them with crowd control ammunition and tear gas.

Has he such a short memory that he cannot recall Britain's humanitarian transfer of Lockerbie bomber mastermind Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in exchange for a lucrative oil deal with Libya to favour BP? Which, along with other British corporate interests in the country, inclusive of GlaxoSmithKline, KPMG, Shell and Standard Chartered enjoy business dealings in the country. Has he thought of halting investments until such time as Gadhafi decamps?

For surely there is more to come, as promised by Saif al-Islam, the Libyan reformer, who has threatened that his father's regime is prepared to "fight to the last bullet", warning of a bloody civil war should the protest groups not be prepared to back down, for his father will not. But when he does, because he will be forced to ultimately, what will there be in his stead?

With the vast riches that the state (Gadhafi) acquired through fossil fuel production and export, where is the state infrastructure and the executive administration, the knowledgeable civilian technocrats, to run the country? The Islamist groups that Gadhafi was so anxious to send out over the world to wreak their mischief on his behalf now stand ready to pounce within Libya.

This inchoate anarchy is the legacy of a mad man who was recognized as such, even as he was being courted by Western business interests and their governments, and by his collegial co-rulers and -tyrants in the Middle East.