Sign of the Times Middle East Style


Michael Stuart Kelly

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Well, I think the Copts need to buckle up. Compared to them you're going to have it pretty smooth.

I have close friends and clients that are Coptic Christians and they have lots of family over there, so it will not be smooth at all.

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  • 6 months later...
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Plan ahead, Muammar!!

200px-Muammar_al-Gaddafi_at_the_AU_summit.jpg

From King of Kings to hiding in a storm drain. Thanks for your 42 years of repression, you get slaughtered by your own people, and your body abused and later paraded through the streets of Misurata on truck. Not quite what you planned, but ...

gaddafi-dead-1.jpg

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I will leave the last word on the death of Gaddafi to a Libya exile, Mohammed Mesrati, from his article today in the UK's Telegraph.

For those in the West, it can be difficult to understand just exactly what dictatorship means. It’s a state where you don’t just have no rights – you have no knowledge, either. From the age of two, a friend of mine went with his mother every month to the Abu Salim prison, hoping in vain to see his father, who was imprisoned there. It wasn’t until 2001 that they learned he had died in 1996, during the notorious massacre in which a reported 1,200 inmates were slaughtered. That same friend died on February 20 this year, shot in the head while fighting with the revolutionaries against the regime that had murdered his father.

For those of us in exile in the West, the past few months have been something like a dream. During the Egyptian revolution, I hardly slept at all – I remember saying to friends, almost as a joke, “Imagine if we could stand up to Gaddafi like that!” At the time, we all laughed: before the revolution, we Libyans thought of ourselves as rats. Once the revolution actually started, we thought of ourselves as lions.

During the fighting, I lost many of my family and friends: virtually all of my cousins had joined the uprising. But when I call my aunts and uncles, they tell me not to mourn – that they didn’t waste their blood, that they died for a good cause.

I heard yesterday from my father that one cousin, who is only two years older than me, was one of the people who killed Gaddafi. Words cannot express how proud I am. Some in the West will say that Gaddafi should have faced justice in court. But Libya has suffered for 42 years – if he had been captured, the trial would have gone on for three years, four years, until everyone was exhausted. The book of Libyan history is full of blood and killing. We don’t need this man any more. Just close the page. For Libya, today is year zero, a new start. It will be a long journey to create a democracy. But even if it takes 10 years, or 20 years, we will do it. There must never be a dictator again.

Edited by william.scherk
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