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On 2/24/11 8:47 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:
http://feb17.info/media/image-the-free-people-of-benghazi-flood-the-streets/";
Well, personally I'm not sure what that picture shows, much less
what it proves, and also personally, I don't give much credence to
the question of what flag is flying in Bengazi, but just so you know,
BBC, who has a reporter in Bengazi, just reported that it was the
flag of the King Idris days that is currently flying in Bengazi.
As sobuadhaigh pointed out, the flag in the link you supplied is not
that of King Idris, but that of the original flag of national
independence. There are 3 different flags. The protesters have raised
flag number one, not flag number two (the King's flag.) If they really
were monarchists, they would have raised flag number two.
Libyan flags: http://flagspot.net/flags/ly_1951.html
But in any case, all this is besides the point. Immigrant rights
protesters carried the American flag, the ultimate symbol of racism and
imperialism.
The fact is that neither you nor the WWP have a clue what the protesters
think, but as I have pointed out in my blog piece on Qaddafi and the
left we do know what Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem believed.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/qaddafi-and-the-left/
Back in 2006 the New Yorker Magazine ran a long article on Libya by
Andrew Solomon titled Circle of Fire that really gives you a flavor of
the changes taking place:
[Prime Minister Ghanem] Dr. Shukri, as he is called by those close to
him and by those who pretend to be close to him–he has a Ph.D. in
international relations from the Fletcher School, at Tufts–has a certain
portly grandeur. With a neat mustache and a well-tailored suit, he
exuded an effortless cosmopolitanism that seemed more conducive to
facilitating Libya’s reentry into the world than to winning over the
hard-line elements at home. When I arrived, he was sitting on a gilded
sofa in a room furnished with Arabic reimaginings of Louis XVI
furniture, before many trays of pastries and glasses of the inevitable
mint tea. In the Libyan empire of obliquity, his clarity was refreshing,
and his teasing irony seemed to acknowledge the absurdity of Libyan
doubletalk.
I mentioned that many of his colleagues saw no need to hasten the pace
of reform. This was clearly not his view. “Sometimes you have to be hard
on those you love,” he said. “You wake your sleeping child so that he
can get to school. Being a little harsh, not seeking too much
popularity, is a better way.” He spoke of the need for pro-business
measures that would reduce bureaucratic impediments and rampant
corruption. “The corruption is tied to shortages, inefficiency, and
unemployment,” the Prime Minister said. “Cutting red tape–there is
resistance to it. There is some resistance in good faith and some in bad
faith.”
Nor was he inclined to defer to the regime’s egalitarian rhetoric.
“Those who can excel should get more–having a few rich people can build
a whole country,” he said. Qaddafi’s “Green Book” decreed that people
should be “partners, not wage workers,” but it is not easy to make
everyone a partner, the Prime Minister observed. “People don’t want to
find jobs. They want the government to find them jobs. It’s not viable.”
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