Well, let us consider some additional elements of that context. Such, for instance, as the mural from Benghazi shown in the following widely reproduced AP photo.

According to the accompanying AP caption, the caricature is supposed to depict Muammar al-Gaddafi and the Arabic writing is “a reference to Qaddafi’s self-declared title ‘The King of Kings of Africa.’” In fact, as reported by the BBC here, the title was bestowed upon Gaddafi by a meeting of traditional African rulers in 2008. The meeting happens to have been held precisely in Benghazi. As the AP caption notes, the writing on the mural replaces the title “King of Kings of Africa” with the phrase “Monkey of Monkeys of Africa.”

What clearer evidence of anti-African racism could there possibly be? Other caricatures from Benghazi that are readily available on the web depict Gaddafi outright as a monkey and show him wearing exotic fruits wrapped in his headdress, apparently to underscore his “African-ness.” Some of the caricatures clearly modify his physical features in order to depict him as being a black African. Crudely derogatory portrayals show him, for instance, with exaggerated thick lips and not merely the “frizzy hair” that he has, but an “afro” in the strict sense.

Indeed, inspection of the visual evidence suggests that the association of Gaddafi with black Africa and black Africans is one of the two major ideological ticks of the rebellion. The other, as I already discussed at the outset of the rebellion, is the association of Gaddafi with Israel. Just as the caricatures sometimes depict Gaddafi as himself being a black African, sometimes too they depict him as being a Jew. I hope to return to both subjects at greater length soon.

In light of the above and in light of the extensive video evidence of black soldiers being singled out for horrific abuse by rebel forces and “protestors,” there is strong reason to doubt that the rebel fixation upon Gaddafi’s “frizzy hair” is merely a matter of innocent “fun,” as many accounts in the western media suggest.

Moreover, there is at least one piece of symptomatic evidence that the rebels and/or their supporters do in fact associate Gaddafi’s hair with “African-ness”: namely, the very translations cited in my previous article. Those translations did not come from a western source. As noted, they came from Feb17.info: a site that describes itself as “Libyan Revolution Central” and that has served as perhaps the principal “showcase” of the rebellion vis-à-vis the rest of the world. On Feb17.info’s own account, the slogans and translations were assembled by “a group of dedicated Libyans.”

The latter might know better than western journalists how they see Gaddafi. As a rule, the western journalists have, in any case, ignored or covered up virtually all the evidence of racism in the Libyan rebellion.

Libya is not a member of the international convention banning the use of such munitions. Only 55 countries are. The United States, incidentally, is not a member of the convention either. Nonetheless, Libyan government spokespersons have denied using the weapons.

But, in any case, a report from Misrata in the weekend edition of the French newspaper Le Figaro inadvertently casts doubt on the claims of the rebel leadership and Human Rights Watch. Le Figaro reporter Adrien Jaulmes was, in effect, “embedded” with rebel forces. Speaking, so to say, “off-script,” a rebel fighter told him that there are no civilians in Misrata. Indeed, the rebel fighter expressly called on NATO to bomb the center of the city.

Here is the full quote:

The air strikes have helped us a lot and we thank Sarkozy. Tell him that. NATO was slow to resume the aerial bombardments, but now they are doing good work. The planes are attacking Gaddafi’s tanks and weapons convoys. Now, they need to attack directly those [Libyan government forces] who are in the center of Misrata. There aren’t any civilians. There are only combatants like us.

Referring to the city’s main thoroughfare, the rebel fighter added, “They can bomb Tripoli Street.”

Update:

Apropos comment #1 below, in a separate report published in the same edition of Le Figaro, Adrien Jaulmes addresses the issue of whether civilians are still present elsewhere “in” Misrata, if not in the city center. What he says on the matter is contradictory and whether they are or are not appears finally to be a matter of definition. On the one hand, he insists that most of the residents have stayed in the “besieged city.” On the other hand, he says that most of the residents have been evacuated to a neighborhood adjoining the port and that the port is “outside the city.” The so-called port of Misrata is also known as Gasr Ahmed.

The below Google satellite photo makes clear that the port is in fact located at some distance from the city proper. The city of Misrata is the agglomeration to the left. The port of Gasr Ahmed is to the right.

Jaulmes – whose account, incidentally, amounts to a paean to the rebel forces – claims that Gasr Ahmed is also being struck by Libyan government artillery. But, in any case, contrary to the tenor of so many recent reports, it would appear that Misrata proper is not now in fact a “besieged city,” but rather a city  that has been largely emptied of its population and transformed into the scene of combat between government and rebel forces.

But before there was the Interim National Council, there was the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition (NCLO). It was the NCLO that called for the February 17 “Day of Rage” that would provide the spark for what the Interim National Council now calls the “February 17 Revolution.” As discussed in my PJM report here, the choice of date was not arbitrary. February 17 marked the anniversary of an earlier protest in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi: namely, a 2006 protest against the famous “Mohammed cartoons” that were published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

A commentator by the name of Andy Stone discovered further evidence of the Islamist inspiration of the “February 17 Revolution” on the NCLO website. On February 15, just two days before the “Day of Rage,” the organization published a text in Arabic titled “Gaddafi: Islam’s Enemy no. 1”. The text comprises of a sort of indictment of Muammar al-Gaddafi for a long list of alleged crimes against Islamic orthodoxy. PJ Media here documents the principal charges laid out in the NCLO’s “Gaddafi: Islam’s Enemy no. 1”. The English translation is by Tony Badran.

-o-

This unbeliever has fought Islam with every possible means, he closed the Islamic University four months after his fateful coup, and then shut down religious institutes in 1982.

He forbade Islamic books from being circulated and from entering Libya, and Islamic books were being confiscated at airports and border checkpoints, and their owners were referred to the internal security apparatus for investigation.

He followed the same old ways of hypocrites, establishing a mosque which he named (The Islamic Da’wa Society), which, on its face, was meant to preach Islam, but secretly a cover for the work of Gaddafi’s secret services abroad, including spying and sabotage in Muslim lands.

He builds mosques in Africa and Pakistan and many places around the world in order to appear as the protector of Islam, while at the same time, his prisons were filled with thousands of young pure Muslim prisoners, which he then executed in a massacre unprecedented in modern history.

…

In Libya, the Italian military governor Graziani never dared to say: Put the Qur’an on the shelf because it is no longer suitable for this age. But the impostor Gaddafi did say that.

Graziani never dared to say that afternoon prayer consisted of two kneels, but the impostor Gaddafi did. He also said that there’s nothing in the Qur’an that says that prayer consists of four kneels.

…

Neither Graziani or any occupier dared to say that the prophetic Sunna did not exist, and that it was the invention of the Jews, or sarcastically deride Sayyida Aisha and the Sahaba and the scholars. But Gaddafi the unbeliever did say that.

The colonizer never dared to say that Jews and Christians are permitted to go to Mecca and walk around the Ka’ba. But the unbeliever Gaddafi did say it.

The colonizer never dared to mock the veil, describing it as a tent or a rag. But the unbeliever Gaddafi did.

The colonizer never dared to say that he achieved what the prophets failed to achieve. But the unbeliever Gaddafi said that his revolution achieved what the prophets were unable to.

Have you heard of any tyrant who has done to Islam and its people what the criminal Gaddafi has done?”

Nonetheless, according to Ping, the members of the AU delegation requested permission from the UN Security Council to pursue their mission anyway and were refused. Ping told Jeune Afrique that the Security Council refused the request “because it [the trip] would have been too dangerous.”

More generally, on the AU’s opposition to the Western-led “humanitarian” intervention in Libya, Ping explained,

We have already experienced this type of intervention. Remember Somalia. President Siad Barré was overthrown in 1991. Then the UN operation Restore Hope occurred. And then what? The international community came in and it ran away. For twenty years now, Africa has been left to face the problem of Somalia alone.

Ping noted that Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi had accepted the four-point “road map” for resolving the crisis proposed by the African Union. “But for there to be a cessation of hostilities,” he added, “the other side has also to stop fighting.”

(Note: The interview with Jean Ping was conducted on March 24 and appears in the current issue of Jeune Afrique. It is not available online.)

Bongiorni describes his arrival in Darnah as follows:

One sees that Darnah is a conservative city from the religious fervor of its inhabitants, from the Islamic manner of dress, from the long beards. “Dear brothers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the announcer on the local radio exhorts…, “Now is the time to defend your land!”

Bongiorni specifies that the local radio is “one of the broadcasters created after 42 years of censorship in Libya.”

The sources for the Times article are for the most part unnamed industry insiders, unnamed “American officials,” and documents from the WikiLeaks cache of leaked State Department cables. One named source is a member of the as-Senussi royal family, which Gaddafi drove from power and which has its power-base precisely in the Cyrenaica region of eastern Libya that is currently rebelling against Gaddafi’s rule. Perhaps not the most neutral source imaginable… According to Praveen Swami of The Telegraph, by the way, the former American diplomat James Atkins has described the as-Senussi monarchy as “one of the most corrupt in the world.”

It should be noted that the New York Times has access to the complete stash of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, whereas only a tiny fraction of them has been published on the WikiLeaks website. This means that the Times has ample opportunity to cherry-pick and that competing media and the public have only very limited possibility for verification. Only one of the cables cited in the Times piece has a link on it and the link does not even work. Based on a search on CableSearch, another of the cited cables appears not to have been published at all.

In any case, in light of the Times story, it is interesting to note what oil company executives told the late Congressman Tom Lantos and former Senator Arlen Specter during a joint visit to Libya in August 2006. As noted in my PJM report on the Lantos/ Specter visit, a leaked State Department record of the trip has been published by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. According to the cable, the oil company executives told Lantos and Specter that “on the big picture issues like personal security and government corruption, they see Libya as offering a relatively favorable operating environment compared to their counterparts working in Nigeria, Indonesia, Colombia and other oil-production states.”

French Interior Minister Claude Guéant on "Talk Orange – Le Figaro"

Asked about the intervention and its conformity with Security Council resolution 1973, Guéant took the opportunity to defend Sarkozy from his domestic critics. This is what he said:

Regarding the criticisms that have been made of the President…, now everyone realizes that we are fortunate that he [Sarkozy] was there. The whole world was getting ready to watch massacres committed by Gaddafi on the television. Fortunately, the President took the lead of the crusade, in order to mobilize the United Nations, and then also the Arab League, and the African Union.

The full interview is available here. The relevant passage is between 10:15 and 10:35 of the clip. Incidentally, as reported by France’s national wire service, the AFP, the African Union has called for an immediate stop to the joint Franco-British-American military action against Libya.

One rebel says: “We were at Benghazi with many other volunteers. From there, we are at Ajdabiya, the center of the Jihad.”

A second rebel, alluding to the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi, adds: “Forty-two years of a nightmare… Now the time of Jihad has arrived!”

A third yells “Allahu Akbar!” as other rebels fire their guns into the air.

Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy famously recognized the rebels’ so-called National Council as the “legitimate representative of the Libyan people.” But a report in last weekend’s edition of the French daily Le Figaro notes that the full membership of the council is not even known. Reporting from Benghazi, Figaro correspondent Tanguy Berthemet writes, “Officially, it is supposed to have 31 members. But only seven names have been made public. …One does not know where its headquarters are or what its daily order of business is.”

More ominously, Berthemet’s report makes clear that the National Council is supported by local Islamists. Indeed, it might well contain some. Although Berthemet’s article cites “security concerns,” perhaps this is the reason that the names have not been released. In any case, Berthemet notes that the next step for the National Council is to put together “a veritable transitional government.” His report continues:

“It’s just a matter of time,” Mohammed Bosidra says, “It’s not a problem, and this government will be recognized by all countries, even in the West.” For Bosidra, a lawyer who is close to the Islamists and who was imprisoned for twenty years, radical Muslims are the only force capable of preventing the formation of a cabinet. But Abdul Hakim al-Hisasady, the voice of Libya’s Islamists, has given his go-ahead.

By “Abdul-Hakim al-Hisasady,” Berthemet appears to mean Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, who reportedly declared an “Islamic Emirate” in eastern Libya shortly after the start of the Libyan unrest (and who landed a notably chummy interview with the New York Times earlier this month).

At one point, JDD reporter Laurent Valdiguié says, “Democracies don’t like regimes that fire on their own people….” This is Gaddafi’s response:

I have never fired on my own people! And you don’t think that the Algerian regime has been using force for years in combating Islamist extremism? And you don’t think that the Israelis bomb Gaza and civilian victims because of the armed groups that are there? And in Afghanistan or in Iraq, you don’t know that the American army regularly causes civilian victims? Does NATO never fire on civilians in Afghanistan? Here in Libya we have not fired on anybody. The investigative commission will show that. Half of the dead consist of police and soldiers; the other half consists of attackers [rebels]. I defy the international community to come here and prove the contrary.

Readers may judge for themselves the pertinence of Gaddafi’s allusions to civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the remark about Israel and Gaza is particularly interesting. It certainly seems to treat Israeli military actions in Gaza as legitimate: namely, in light of the “armed groups that are there.” What other leader of an Arab country or of a predominantly Muslim one would formulate matters in this way? Would, for instance, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan? The answer, of course, is no.

And here, incidentally, is a further picture of a portrait of Gaddafi that has been defaced by Libyan protestors with, among other things, a Star of David.

The picture comes from the French-language Belgian public television RTBF, where it appeared – uncommented – as the final shot in a documentary on Gaddafi. (Hat-tip: the Philosémitisme blog.) Note too the use of the black eye-patch. The eye-patch is also to be seen in many of the defaced images of Hosni Mubarak from the Egyptian protests. It appears to be an allusion to the former head of the Israeli armed forces Moshe Dayan.

For my earlier collection of similar images from the Libyan protests, see here.

The scenarios for establishing a “no-fly zone” over Libya that are currently under discussion strongly recall NATO’s establishment of a “no fly zone” over Bosnia in the 1990s. Although the ostensible logic of the latter operation was also “humanitarian,” American military analysts are perfectly clear about the fact that it amounted in practice to a military intervention in support of one of the warring parties in a civil war. (See Colonel Robert C. Owen, ed., Deliberate Force – in particular, Chapter 1 by Karl Mueller.)

On PJ Media, Ryan Mauro has expressed enthusiasm for European efforts to impose a “no-fly zone” over Libya. The title and sub-title to his piece – for which, he does not necessarily bear responsibility – even suggest that Europe is thereby “taking the lead” in combating “Islamic extremism.” But with all due respect to PJM headline-writers, not all Arabs are “Islamic extremists” and Muammar Gaddafi, whatever else he may be, is most definitely not one. Indeed, as I have pointed out here on the Tatler blog, actual Islamic extremists – namely, the North African branch of Al-Qaeda – are openly supporting the Libyan rebels in their struggle against Gaddafi.

Moreover, it is worth recalling in this connection that when the US and its European allies intervened in the Bosnian conflict by imposing a “no-fly zone,” they did so in support of the Islamist President of Bosnia Alija Izetbegovic and of Bosnian government forces that included thousands of foreign mujahideen. (Izetbegovic had authored a manifesto entitled “The Islamic Declaration.”) The whole story is told in grim detail and with extensive documentation by John R. Schindler in his Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad.

One of the foreign jihadists with whom NATO made common cause in Bosnia was none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the future “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks.

In short, the American fans of a “humanitarian” intervention in Libya ought perhaps to be careful what they wish for…

*“Dans l’Est, les combats avivent les rivalités tribales” (not available online).

According to SITE, AQIM has assured the rebel forces that “[We] will do whatever we can to help you, with power from Allah, because your fight is the fight of every Muslim who loves Allah and His Messenger.” AQIM explains, furthermore, “We were pained by the carnage and the cowardly massacres carried out by the killer of innocents Gaddafi against our people and our unarmed Muslim brothers who only came to lift his oppression, his disbelief, his tyranny and his might.”

Note that AQIM’s interpretation of events is essentially indistinguishable from the interpretation of events to be found in almost all western media accounts – except that the latter tend to leave out the part about “his disbelief.” Note too that the statement is also said to cheer on the success of the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.

Not yet ten years after the 9/11 attacks, western commentators, on both the Left and the Right, are today virtually unanimously making common cause with al-Qaeda. One would hope that this realization would at least lead to a moment of reflection, if not self-doubt.

But with all due respect, it strikes me that both the suggestion and the enthusiasm it has inspired are indicative of an alarming tendency for Americans to make snap judgments on foreign conflict situations based upon highly limited information coming from often highly dubious sources. If there is an intrinsic “fog of war,” as Robert McNamara famously emphasized, it is surrounded, in the meanwhile, by an even thicker “fog of media coverage” of war and other forms of conflict.

What is most astonishing as concerns the specific case of Libya is that much of the supposed information upon which Americans are relying to make their judgments comes from none other than Al-Jazeera: a media organization that only a few years ago was being widely denounced, especially by conservatives, as the propaganda arm of al-Qaeda.

Michael speculates that several NATO allies, including the Italians, would be “happy to participate” in an American-led attack. There is reason to doubt this. Since I believe Michael reads Italian, I can refer him to an interview with Foreign Minister Franco Frattini that was published in yesterday’s edition of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

In it, Frattini emphasizes the general state of ignorance of western observers concerning the nature of the opposition to Gaddafi, and he refers, in particular, to the self-proclaimed “Islamic Emirate of East Libya.” “We do not know more [about it],” Frattini says, “But we know that they are dangerous. There are elements of al-Qaeda there. As consequence, in 2006 we decided to close the Italian consulate in Cyrenaica.” Moreover, Frattini predicts that if the current political system in Libya collapses, it will set off an “exodus of biblical proportions,” notably towards Italy and other European countries.

I can also refer Michael to Lorenzo Cremonesi’s report in the same edition of the Corriere. Cremonesi’s article makes it clear that the opposition to Gaddafi in the eastern part of the country is itself armed. Cremonesi reports seeing former soldiers and police (i.e. who have defected to the rebels) opening up “massive wooden crates containing bazookas and ammunition of all sorts of calibers.”

And, btw, the first images of protesters holding pictures of Gaddafi with Stars of David scrawled on them have also begun to appear.

(source: Al Arabiya)

Not democracy, in any case. It is about power struggle, accounts to be settled, revenge. I did not meet a single person who spoke about democracy….The protests have developed their own dynamic. It has nothing to do with political will. Someone opens fire, then there is rage and mourning, then there is more shooting – and the situation escalates. Now there are demands that Gaddafi has to go. Well, of course: he is the one that sent in the army. What is interesting is our reflexive reaction: protests are good and they lead to democracy. But this is nothing more than CNN-style wishful thinking.

Among other sources of the anti-Gaddafi movement, Riedle mentions the fundamentalist Islamic Fighting Force and “war-like tribes in the east of the country who consider Gaddafi a jerk, because they consider anybody a jerk who has power over them.”

In general, reporting on the Egyptian events in the French media has been as mind-numbingly uniform as in the American media. But Jeune Afrique has long marched to the beat of a different drummer. It is, for instance, one of the only major French print media – perhaps indeed it is the only one – to have published an extensive and critical examination of the Mohammed Al-Dura affair, and it did so already in 2005.

This latter fact should, by the way, give cause to pause to those commentators – including some on PJ Media – who like to affirm that all Arabs are inveterate Jew-haters and that is just the way it is. Although Jeune Afrique has its headquarters in Paris, it was in fact founded in Tunisia by the journalist and businessman Béchir Ben Yahmed. Ben Yahmed remained the editor-in-chief of the publication until 2007, and he remains the publisher to this day. In short, prejudice is never a good substitute for knowledge.

Referring to the ban, as well as warnings issued to twenty other religious channels, the then Egyptian Minister of Information Anas al-Fiqi explained:

These corrective measures are intended to protect the Egyptian and Arab peoples from broadcasters determined to make calls for murder, degradation of religious groups, and the endangerment of people living with serious illnesses – all in pursuit of profit and extremist ideologies. (Source: Al-Masry Al-Youm)

Responding to al-Fiqi’s charges, a spokesman for Al-Nas insisted, “These are vague accusations. Words like ‘terrorism,’ ‘extremism’ and ‘violence’ are very loose and lack precision. There is no evidence to prove this.”

For western sensibilities, of course, the very existence of a so-called Minister of Information is suspect. But it should be noted that in banning the channels accused by it of incitement, the Egyptian government was doing nothing different than what French authorities have also done in banning Al-Rahma, as well as the Lebanese channel Al-Manar, from French satellite television.

Although the Egyptian government of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik is reportedly continuing to conduct the business of state, one member of Shafik’s government is reported not only to have resigned, but to have been placed under house arrest: namely, the now former Minister of Information Anas al-Fiqi. A group known as the Arabic Network for Human Rights has accused Al-Fiqi of committing “incitement” against Egyptians. It appears to be payback time for the minister who dared to silence the Islamist channels.

US pundits on TV saying Israel was not an issue in #Jan25 protests r fools. Did u listen to the chants in Tahrir or saw the banners?

(Hat-tip: Martin Kramer.)