The Colonels

Abu Musa al-Ash'ari said, "I visited the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, with two of my cousins. One of them said, 'Messenger of Allah, give us authority over some of what Allah, the Mighty and Exalted, has appointed you over.' The other said something similar. He said, 'By Allah, we will not appoint anyone over this matter who asks for it nor anyone who is eager for it." [Agreed upon]

Colonel Ghaddaffi's eagerly awaited speech, which Libyans were no doubt hoping would herald his departure,was short and given in his usually inimitable style. This time, rather appropriately given his Leninist inspired ideals, he was in a Soviet era looking van and was holding aloft a huge umbrella. He told of how he wasn't in Venezuela, but in Libya, and that he'd been talking to youth in Green Square.


Clearly, he was trying to present himself as a kindly "grandfather of the nation" figure and the uprising (for which mosques throughout Libya have been broadcasting the call, "Come for Jihad")as nothing more than a falling out and nothing that a chat with the youth down on Green Square couldn't sort out.

And in other news:
The use, by the government of Bahrain, of foreign citizens (mainly Jordanian and Pakistani) to oppress Bahrainis is not just limited to the armed forces. It appears that the torture of Bahraini's was, at one point, overseen by a British policeman by the name of Colonel Ian Henderson AKA The Butcher of Bahrain.

This wouldn't have escaped government attention- the contined good relations between the UK and Bahrain, in spite of clear evidence of the Khalifa families use of torture, certainly makes the "humanitarian" mission in Afghanistan sound all the more ridiculous.