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Books by
Barack
Obama
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
/
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the
American Dream
Obama's Greatest Speeches (CD set) /
Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters
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Speech on Libya
Situation
By President
Barack Obama
18 March 2011
East Room
Good afternoon, everybody. I want
to take this opportunity to update the American people
about the situation in Libya. Over the last several
weeks, the world has watched events unfold in Libya with
hope and alarm. Last month, protesters took to the
streets across the country to demand their universal
rights, and a government that is accountable to them and
responsive to their aspirations. But they were met with
an iron fist.
Within days, whole parts of the
country declared their independence from a brutal
regime, and members of the government serving in Libya
and abroad chose to align themselves with the forces of
change.
Moammar Qaddafi
clearly lost the confidence of
his own people and the legitimacy to lead.
Instead of respecting the rights of
his own people, Qaddafi chose the path of brutal
suppression. Innocent civilians were beaten,
imprisoned, and in some cases killed. Peaceful protests
were forcefully put down. Hospitals were attacked and
patients disappeared. A campaign of intimidation and
repression began.
In the face of this injustice, the
United States and the international community moved
swiftly. Sanctions were put in place by the United
States and our allies and partners. The U.N. Security
Council imposed further sanctions, an arms embargo, and
the specter of international accountability for Qaddafi
and those around him. Humanitarian assistance was
positioned on Libya's borders, and those displaced by
the violence received our help. Ample warning was given
that Qaddafi needed to stop his campaign of repression,
or be held accountable. The
Arab League and the
European Union joined us in calling for an end to
violence.
Once again, Qaddafi chose to ignore
the will of his people and the international community.
Instead, he launched a military campaign against his own
people. And there should be no doubt about his
intentions, because he himself has made them clear.
For decades, he has demonstrated a
willingness to use brute force through his sponsorship
of terrorism against the American people as well as
others, and through the killings that he has carried out
within his own borders. And just yesterday, speaking of
the city of Benghazi—a city of roughly 700,000 people—he
threatened, and I quote: "We will have no mercy and no
pity"—no mercy on his own citizens.
Now, here is why this matters to
us. Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe
that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his
people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian
crisis would ensue. The entire region could be
destabilized, endangering many of our allies and
partners. The calls of the Libyan people for help would
go unanswered. The democratic values that we stand for
would be overrun. Moreover, the words of the
international community would be rendered hollow.
And that's why the United States
has worked with our allies and partners to shape a
strong international response at the
United Nations. Our focus has been clear:
protecting innocent civilians within Libya, and holding
the Qaddafi regime accountable.
Yesterday, in response to a call
for action by the Libyan people and the
Arab League, the
U.N. Security Council passed a strong resolution that
demands an end to the violence against citizens. It
authorizes the use of force with an explicit commitment
to pursue all necessary measures to stop the killing, to
include the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya. It
also strengthens our sanctions and the enforcement of an
arms embargo against the Qaddafi regime.
Now, once more,
Moammar Qaddafi
has a choice. The resolution that passed lays out
very clear conditions that must be met.
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The United States,
the
United Kingdom,
France, and Arab states agree that a
cease-fire must be implemented immediately. That means
all attacks against civilians must stop. Qaddafi must
stop his troops from advancing on Benghazi, pull them
back from
Ajdabiya,
Misrata, and
Zawiya, and establish
water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas.
Humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the
people of Libya.
Let me be clear, these terms are
not negotiable. These terms are not subject to
negotiation. If Qaddafi does not comply with the
resolution, the international community will impose
consequences, and the resolution will be enforced
through military action.
In this effort, the United States
is prepared to act as part of an international
coalition. American leadership is essential, but that
does not mean acting alone—it means shaping the
conditions for the international community to act
together.
That's why I have
directed Secretary Gates and our military to
coordinate their planning,
and tomorrow Secretary Clinton will travel
to Paris for a meeting with our European
allies and Arab partners about the
enforcement of Resolution 1973. |
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We
will provide the unique capabilities that we can bring
to bear to stop the violence against civilians,
including enabling our European allies and Arab partners
to effectively enforce a no fly zone. I have no doubt
that the men and women of our military are capable of
carrying out this mission. Once more, they have the
thanks of a grateful nation and the admiration of the
world.
I also want to be clear about what
we will not be doing. The United States is not going to
deploy ground troops into Libya. And we are not going
to use force to go beyond a well-defined
goal—specifically, the protection of civilians in
Libya. In the coming weeks, we will continue to help
the Libyan people with humanitarian and economic
assistance so that they can fulfill their aspirations
peacefully.
Now, the United States did not seek
this outcome. Our decisions have been driven by
Qaddafi's refusal to respect the rights of his people,
and the potential for mass murder of innocent
civilians. It is not an action that we will pursue
alone. Indeed, our British and French allies, and
members of the Arab League, have already committed to
take a leadership role in the enforcement of this
resolution, just as they were instrumental in pursuing
it. We are coordinating closely with them. And this is
precisely how the international community should work,
as more nations bear both the responsibility and the
cost of enforcing international law.
This is just one more chapter in
the change that is unfolding across the Middle East and
North Africa. From the beginning of these protests, we
have made it clear that we are opposed to violence. We
have made clear our support for a set of universal
values, and our support for the political and economic
change that the people of the region deserve. But I
want to be clear: the change in the region will not and
cannot be imposed by the United States or any foreign
power; ultimately, it will be driven by the people of
the Arab World. It is their right and their
responsibility to determine their own destiny.
Let me close by saying that there
is no decision I face as your Commander in Chief that I
consider as carefully as the decision to ask our men and
women to use military force. Particularly at a time
when our military is fighting in Afghanistan and winding
down our activities in Iraq, that decision is only made
more difficult. But the United States of America will
not stand idly by in the face of actions that undermine
global peace and security. So I have taken this
decision with the confidence that action is necessary,
and that we will not be acting alone. Our goal is
focused, our cause is just, and our coalition is
strong. Thank you very much.
2:31 pm. EDT
Source:
IBTimes
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Obama Supports Multilateral Action in
Libya 18 February 2010
Obama Condemns Violence in Libya 23 February 2011
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Speech on Libya Upheaval
By Barack Obama
White House,
February 23, 2011
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UN Approves Airstrikes to Halt Attacks by Qaddafi Forces
Rebel leaders
boasted about their broader arsenal of weaponry—some
aged warplanes and a helicopter—as well as their
putative gains in Ajdabiya. . . . Despite the bluster by
rebel leaders, some in the rebel strongholds were
growing fatalistic about their hopes without
international help. “People here are terrified,” said
Ahmed al-Hasi, a former diplomat who left Benghazi on
Wednesday for Bayda. “People are saying, ‘We fight until
we die, or we surrender and we are humiliated and then
we are killed,’ ” he said. “It will be a very, very
bloody fight, and I know I will fight to the end.”—NYTimes
U.N. Security Council approves no-fly zone over Libya
The United States,
France and Britain—three of the five veto-wielding
permanent Security Council members, and seven other
countries approved the resolution, which passed by one
vote more than was required. China and Russia, the two
other permanent members, and three other nations
abstained. There were no votes against it.
Airstrikes were
expected against dozens of Libyan air defense missile
sites to eliminate threats to planes enforcing the
no-fly zone. The resolution's key provision also
authorized countries enforcing the zone "to take all
necessary measures . . . to protect civilians and
civilian populated areas under threat of attack . . .
including Benghazi," but it ruled out a foreign
occupation force "of any form on any part of Libyan
territory."—MiamiHerald
U.S. Missiles Strike Libyan Air Defense
Targets
American and
European forces began a broad campaign of strikes
against the government of Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi on Saturday, unleashing warplanes
and missiles in the first round of the largest
international military intervention in the Arab world
since the invasion of Iraq. . . . The missile strikes
were the start of what Admiral Gortney called a
“multiphase operation” to create a no-flight zone that
would allow coalition aircraft to fly all over Libya
without the risk of being shot down. He would not say
whether American aircraft would be involved in the
no-flight zone, but he said that no American warplanes
aircraft were directly over Libya on Saturday afternoon.
Admiral Gortney
cast the United States as the “leading edge” among
coalition partners in the opening phase of attacks on
Libya. But in keeping with Mr. Obama’s and Mrs.
Clinton’s emphasis that the administration was not
driving the efforts to strike Libya, he and other
Pentagon officials repeated that the United States would
step back within days and hand command of the coalition
to one of European allies. The United States has at
least 11 warships stationed near the coast of Tripoli,
including three ballistic missile submarines—the
Scranton, the Florida and the Providence—and two
destroyers, the Stout and Barry.
All five fired
cruise missiles on Saturday, the admiral said. Other
coalition ships in the Mediterranean included 11 Italian
ships, one French ship, one British ship and one
Canadian ship.—NYTimes
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Africans
Beware the Saviors of Libya (Asante)
/
Libya,
Africa, and the Victorians (Manheru)
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Responses to Obama's War on Libya
Andrew Sullivan at the Daily
Dish
The president’s
speech was disturbingly empty. There are, it appears,
only two reasons the US is going to war, without any
Congressional vote, or any real public debate. The first
is that the US cannot stand idly by while atrocities
take place. Yet we have done nothing in Burma or the
Congo and are actively supporting governments in Yemen
and Bahrain that are doing almost exactly—if less
noisily—what Qaddafi is doing. Obama made no attempt to
reconcile these inconsistencies because, one suspects,
there is no rational reconciliation to be made.
Secondly, the
president argued that the ghastly violence in Libya is
destabilizing the region, and threatening world peace.
Really? More than Qaddafi’s meddling throughout Africa
for years? More than the brutal repression in Iran? And
even if it is destabilizing, Libya is not, according to
the Obama administration itself, a “vital national
interest.” So why should the US go to war over this?
None of this makes
any sense, except as an emotional response to an
emergency. I understand the emotions, and sympathize
with the impulse to help. But I can think of no worse
basis for committing a country to war than such
emotional and moral anxiety.—NYTimes
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Ezra Klein at The Washington
Post
I didn’t find
President Obama’s remarks on Libya comforting. The point
of the speech, as I understood it, was both to announce
that we were engaging but also assure America that our
engagement was going to be limited. But consider the
promises made. “The United States is not going to deploy
ground troops into Libya. And we are not going to use
force to go beyond a well-defined goal, specifically the
protection of civilians in Libya.” Those two sentences
are at war with each other. Protecting civilians might
well require more than bombing runways. If Gaddafi is
deposed and the state collapses into tribal warfare,
does our pledge to resist ground troops trump our pledge
to protect civilians? Or will it be the other way
around?
The easy response
to this is to ask how I can be so diffident in the face
of slaughter. But consider Obama’s remarks. “Left
unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe
that Gaddafi would commit atrocities against his people.
Many thousands could die.” Every year, one million
people die from malaria. About three million children
die, either directly or indirectly, due to hunger. There
is much we could due to help the world if we were
willing. The question that needs to be asked is: Why
this?—NYTimes
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Adam Serwer at The Plum Line
The problem is that
we still don’t know very much about who the rebels are
or what they ultimately want. Libya’s internal politics
were opaque to the West even before the war. We don’t
know how much international involvement will be required
to ensure Gaddafi falls, or what level of commitment the
United States, as the world’s only superpower, will
ultimately be forced to make. In other words, none of
the key questions looming over the crisis have been
answered—even though we’ve already learned the hard way
in Iraq what happens when we fail to plan for the peace
before we start a war.
All we really know
right now is that America is destined to own the outcome
in Libya.—NYTimes
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Simon Tisdall at The Guardian
It’s plain that
whichever way the stated aims of the intervention are
defined, achieving them will be highly problematic. The
least of them—a genuine ceasefire—would effectively
freeze the current confrontation in place, with rival
camps entrenched in the east and west. The conflict
could degenerate into a prolonged stalemate, as in the
Korean peninsula or Georgia. Meaningful negotiation
would be impossible while Gaddafi remained in power.
Interventionists
cannot achieve Gaddafi’s removal, another key aim, by
force of arms, bar a ground invasion or a lucky shot.
(The same goes for democratic governance.) The west is
relying instead on more mass defections, an army mutiny
or a palace coup—what analyst Shashank Joshi of the
Royal United Services Institute has called “regime
breakdown.”
By withholding
immediate attacks on Friday despite French impatience to
get stuck in, Obama and Cameron appeared to be hoping
the pressure on Gaddafi and his supporters would lead to
internal rupture and an implosion.—NYTimes
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Glenn Greenwald at Salon
As our other good friends Saudi
Arabia and Bahrain collaborate on attacking civilian
protesters, there are no calls for U.S. intervention
there—even though that’s arguably more serious than
what’s happening in Libya—because those governments
serve our interests. Nor is there much anger among
Americans (as opposed to Egyptians) over our
decades-long support for the dictator of Egypt (and most
of the other tyrants now suddenly being vilified).
That’s because our conduct in the Middle East isn’t
driven by humanitarian objectives no matter how
manipulatively that flag is waved. It’s driven by a
desire to advance our perceived interests regardless of
humanitarian outcomes, and exactly the same would be
true for any intervention in Libya. Even if we were
capable of fostering humanitarian outcomes in that
nation—and that’s highly doubtful—that wouldn’t be our
mission.—NYTimes
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Daniel Larison at Eunomia
The intervening governments may
have caught a lucky break in that Gaddafi’s desire for
self-preservation has given them a way out of going
through with the folly of attacking Libya. This is
temporarily a good outcome for Libya’s rebels, but there
are several reasons why this may still prove to be bad
for the U.S. and our allies. Intervening governments
that have committed to providing defense for civilian
areas in Libya and enforcing a no-fly zone are now stuck
with that commitment for the foreseeable future. That
could tie up military resources for as long as the
conflict continues, and there’s no telling how long that
might be. We can expect to see a lot more agitation from
hawks here and in Europe that Gaddafi cannot be allowed
to remain in power, and they are likely to see Gaddafi’s
acceptance of a cease-fire as an unacceptable maneuver
to buy time. Interventionists sold a Libyan war
primarily on humanitarian grounds (“saving” Benghazi,
etc.), but they will not be satisfied at all by a
cessation of hostilities.—NYTimes
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G8 summit: major
powers discuss how to contain “Arab Spring”—By Bill
Van Auken—27 May 2011—On the eve of the summit, France
and Britain revealed that they are deploying attack
helicopters in a qualitative escalation of the
imperialist intervention, while NATO warplanes have
carried out successive nights of heavy bombardments of
Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Russia, which, sees the
US-NATO intervention as a direct threat to its own
extensive interests in Libya’s oil and gas industry, has
condemned the bombing as a violation of UN resolutions.
It has stepped up its own diplomatic initiative, meeting
with representatives of both the Libyan regime and the
so-called rebels backed by Washington and NATO in an
attempt to promote a cease-fire. In the Libyan war, the
real aims of the US and the Western European powers
emerges clearly: the recolonization of the oil-rich
regions of the Middle East and Africa as part of an
attempt to offset the deepening crisis of their
economies.—wsws
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Africans
Beware the Saviors of Libya /
US Senate discusses sending troops to Libya
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Last Days of Kenya Colony
This
autobiographical documentary revisits the Mau
Mau Rebellion of the 1950s. More than 50 years
after the conflict, in which the director
participated as a young British soldier
stationed in Kenya for his national service, he
confronts his past with audacity and unflinching
self-inquiry. Combining McWilliams' own
photographic record of the times with original
animation and archival imagery, A Time There Was
crafts a thoughtful account of the Mau Mau
Rebellion – one of the most contentious episodes
in Britain’s imperial endgame.
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At War in Libya: NYTimes Editorial
Planning for a Post-Qaddafi Libya
Rehabilitating U.S. Military Intervention in the Age
of Obama
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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ChickenBones Store
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posted 19 March 2011
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