Remember that thing the Obama administration started a couple of months ago, something about "bombing the shit out of Libya"? No? Well it was right around the start of March Madness; perhaps you were distracted. But the Libya War, and America's military involvement in it, is still quite active. The only thing that's changed is that it's probably in violation of the law now.
Three journalists who were captured and detained by Qaddafi loyalists in early April — James Foley, Clare Morgana Gillis, and Manu Brabo — were released yesterday. The fate of a fourth journalist who was with them, 41-year-old South African photojournalist Anton Hammerl, had been unclear for
the past six weeks. Hammerl was shot on April 5 outside of the Libyan town of Brega after the group came under fire from Qaddafi troops in armored vehicles. GlobalPost spoke with Foley and Gillis after their release in Tunisia:
In your soaking Tuesday media column: Tina Brown goes out on a limb, journalists are set free in Libya, Dorothy Parvaz is still missing, Greta Van Susteren vs. Mediaite, and the media continue to consume and excrete itself, nonstop.
It's unclear why Sarah Palin still keeps people around to write policy positions for her. Weren't we supposed to be over this running-for-president business due to its guaranteed failure? Maybe she's just burning through her PAC money for the hell of it. But it's not going to her longtime war-loving neocon confidantes anymore. She's just too disapproving of the latest war, Libya, for their tastes.
War monster John McCain, fresh off of his triumphant jaunt to Libya, made a shocking confession on this morning's Today show: He is not ready to drop more American freedom bombs, forever and without any actual plan, in another Middle Eastern country where some citizens have been protesting. Is the old nutter on his meds or something? What ever happened to the angry warrior we'd all come to know and not love? This is a classic gaffe.
A man was successfully overtaken by the passengers and crew of an Alitalia flight after he tried to hijack the Rome-bound plane and get it to land in Tripoli.
More than 10,000 protestors took the streets in several Moroccan cities to protest against high unemployment and demand political reforms, the third such demonstration in the country since February. King Mohammed has already announced certain constitutional reforms that would give the country's government more independence from the monarchy; protestors have also asked for the release of political prisoners and reforms that would further limit the king's influence on the economy.
Crazy old coot John McCain landed in the rebel-held eastern Libyan city of Benghazi today. What's the old warmonger doing there? We imagine he's there to size 'em up because, you know, McCain's understanding of Libya's complex system of tribal loyalties probably goes all the way back to Reagan's bombing campaign there in the '80s, and maybe even Back to the Future. He also knows a thing or two about prosecuting a successful war.
Chris Hondros, the Getty war photographer injured in the same attack that killed fellow photojournalist Tim Hetherington earlier today, has also died. Here's an interview he did with The New York Times in February, and The Guardian has a nice retrospective of Hondros' photographs; above, one the last images he submitted from Libya.
In your awful Wednesday media column: a war journalist is killed, another social media news thing exists, a new culture editor at the NYO, Mets writing is unbearable, and a blog anniversary.
Remember the "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse described in a Wikileaks cable about Colonel Muammar Qaddafi? Well, he had a bunch of them, most of whom fled Libya as the rebellion grew stronger. And luckily for us, Newsweek tracked one of them down. According to 24-year-old Oksana Balinskaya, Colonel Qaddafi:
Today CNN broadcast the first on-camera interview with Eman al-Obeidy, the Libyan lawyer who stormed a Tripoli hotel and struggled to tell journalists of how she was raped by pro-Gaddafi forces two weeks ago. She tells CNN that she was "brutally tortured to the point of them entering weapons inside of me" and alcohol was poured in her eyes. Apparently she's relatively safe now, though she's been harassed by Gaddafi's thugs since.
