Former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi may be getting a bad press these days, but there is one media figure who is still a fan. Meet the man who is keeping Muammar --- wherever he might be --- on the air....
On Friday, the relationship between Israel and Turkey deteriorated further: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara would provide an armed escort for a new flotilla to break the blockade on Gaza, while Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed measures from a warning against travel to or through Turkey to support of the Kurdish insurgency PKK.
So what does the tension demonstrate? For all the differences between Israel and Turkey: it shows the two powers can agree on one thing --- playing to domestic audiences with declaration of their foreign policy interests.
Syria Syria Protesters in Anadan in Aleppo Province chant, "Syria Wants Freedom"
Horan in Daraa Province in south
Syria Friday, September 9, 2011 at 12:04 | Scott Lucas in Africa, EA Global, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran See also See also Syria Video Special: Friday's Protests of Defiance --- Set 3
Syria Video Special: Friday's Protests of Defiance --- Set 2
Syria Video Special: Friday's Protests of Defiance --- Set 1
Syria Feature: Defecting Military Officers Tell Their Stories
Egypt Opinion: "Lest We Forget" Why the Revolution Is Worthwhile
Israel Mystery: Who Carried out the Bus Attack in Eilat?
Syria Special: Syrian Ambassador to US Responds to Accusations
Thursday's Syria, Libya (and Beyond) Liveblog: Protests in Homs Defy Violence
2045 GMT: Another clip of the mass rally, organised by the opposition party Al Wefaq (see 1629 GMT), in Bahrain today:
2012 GMT: Protesters have removed most of the wall around the Israeli embassy in Cairo and a protester has once again scaled the 15-story building in order to remove the Israeli flag.
See also Iran Special: Mousavi's Moment Outside House Arrest "The Future is Bright"
Latest from Iran (8 September): Fearing Persian Spring
1610 GMT: Ahmadinejad and Syria. Fars reports on President Ahmadinejad's meeting with Kuwaiti media. Its English-language website highlights Ahmadinejad's caution to Turkey not to host a NATO missile defence system: "Turkey is among our brothers and sincere friends, but when enemies deploy a missile system there and admit that it is against Iran, we should be careful."
Fars, however, does not utter a word about Ahmadinejad's proposal (see 1400 GMT) for an Islamic summit on the Syrian crisis.
Mehr News, however, does mention the President's comments, well into an article on the meeting, on a summit and on reforms in Syria.
A month after an unusual terror attack killed eight Israelis along a desert highway approaching the Red Sea, the incident remains shrouded in mystery, especially in Gaza, where Israeli officials insist the complex, military-style attack was orchestrated but where no group has taken responsibility. "Usually the problem is more than one group takes credit after a successful operation," says Taheri Al-Nunu, a spokesman for Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza. Hamas had immediately denied knowledge of the attack, and hurriedly surveyed the other militant groups operating in the enclave. "All of them denied it."
Among them was the Popular Resistance Committees, the group Israel almost immediately blamed for the attack, and promptly launched what it called a reprisal strike. Before the fighting was finished in the desert outside the resort city of Eilat, a missile from an Israeli drone exploded outside a house in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. The PRC's top commander and two aides were killed, as well as a two-year-old child.
Days before Syrian forces launched a deadly offensive against street protesters in the western city of Baniyas, the colonel leading the attack gathered up six of his officers. The colonel, one of the officers later recounted, put his cellphone on the loudspeaker setting, for all to hear.
The voice of Syria's then-defense minister, Ali Habib, boomed out, providing chilling orders for a crackdown on Baniyas' civilian protesters:
"Any kind of gathering, you disperse it with sheer force. You shoot," the minister said that day in May, recalled a 21-year-old lieutenant in the quwat-al-khassat, or special forces, who said he was one of the six gathered around the colonel's phone.
"And the officer who cannot handle that and disagrees, we will deal with them directly."
There is a general feeling of malaise and melancholy affecting Jan25 protesters, for they feel as if they have accomplished nothing: that the SCAF [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] has halted the revolution and ended it, and it was all for naught. Now this kind of talk infuriates me, not because of its self-pitying whiny nature from otherwise strong people, but because it’s categorically not true. Let me count the ways....
