Based on the latest info from al-Jazeera (which is itself secondhand from Twitter, YouTube and other feeds coming out of Libya), the battle proper has moved into Tripoli.
Based on what few
photos there are coming out of Benghazi, the rebels appear to have the upper hand thing and the city looks mostly secure.
Meanwhile, Qaddafi's son is blaming the Italians and the Turkish for being behind all of this (back history: Libya was a colonial possession of both Italy and the Ottoman Empire at points in the past few hundred years).
As Phmcw mentioned, you can now add Morocco to the list of countries where the shit, if not yet hitting the fan, is certainly poised precariously above it.
Syria is on a low but steady simmer.
Tiny Djibouti is also seeing an intensification of protests and violence.
Algeria seems to be cooling off, mostly because of effective government clampdowns and blatant economic pacification.
Bahrainian protests continue to build, albeit mostly peacefully after the police were pulled back.
In Jordan, King Abdullah sacked his Cabinet after street protests and is in the process of forming a new governement, hopefully to address demands for reform.
Kuwait seems to be taking the economic pacification route, like Algeria (basically, "Hey, here's some free money! Please don't riot!")
Omanis have marched to protest unemployment and low wages, but seem to be supportive of the Sultanate.
In Iraq, there's a "Day of Rage" (typical description of what is mostly just a loud, angry non-violent protest march) scheduled for this Friday in Baghdad.
And in Somalia....well, it's kind of hard to tell. There's sporadic violence and protests by small bands of armed young men. But then, that's like saying there have been reports of fish and water in the ocean.
I think this is close to a tipping point of going well beyond just the Arab Crescent. There's already a few other nations (Gabon, Bolivia) that are looking at the prospect of large, broad social/economic protests toppling an unpopular leader. And of course, the inevitable opportunistic dillweeds in the US suggesting a similar overthrow of Obama (despite the fact that the vast majority of said dillweeds were siding with Mubarak and fretting about the Muslim Brotherhood just a few weeks ago).
SirP: You seem to have missed the fact that the most powerful country in the world began as mobs of angry, mostly uneducated peasants tearing down their own institutions of governance.
And yet, they made a functioning state.
Also, nice job generalizing all Arabs as a bunch of backwards, Koran-spouting goatherds with no possible comprehension of principles of governance. Perhaps you'd like to share how establishing a functioning state is the white man's burden?
Author
Topic: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine! (Read 373598 times)