Category: Libya

The Terror Decades

New York-In the past year or so I’ve spent an unprecedented amount of uninterrupted time here in these United States. Taboo to say at the time, but I departed NYC during three different lockdowns and went off on the highway…

From Bedouin Boy to Big Man

New York-I’m pleased to say that I’m featured in this week’s episode of Noiser Podcasts Real Dictators series produced in Bristol. Happy to be voicing alongside the likes of Alison Pargeter, Ronald Bruce St. John, and Mary Fitzgerald among others.…

The Maghreb Bleeds the Sahel

Albuquerque- Last month I did an interview with the Associated Press about the long, complex history of Libya’s Khalifa Haftar (though the AP uses the transliteration Hifter) for article that was picked up by The New York Times, Washington Post,…

Legacy of the Toyota War

New York- Last month I was featured in an Al Jazeera Arabic documentary entitled For the rest of the story – Hifter .. General Coups about Libyan General/Colonel/strongman/warlord Khalifa Haftar’s (I prefer the more commonly accepted transliteration of his last…

The Rise and Demise of Qaddafi

New York- I’m appearing in a new series which premiered last week for Discovery Networks entitled Evolution of Evil about the rise of dictatorships in the twentieth century. In the first episode I discuss the rise of Muammar Qaddafi (alt. Gaddafi) over…

Libya: Revolution Awry

New York- How did we get here? This is what you may be wondering with the news today that a group of 21 Egyptian Copts were mass beheaded in an unspecified area of coastal Tripolitania by salafi-jihadis in Libya that…

Syria: A Lost Revolution

New York- Three years ago today I trekked into northern Syria’s rebellious Idlib Governorate from Hatay Province in Turkey. I had to put immense trust in my fixer who was living in a Turkish Red Crescent camp at the time with…

Renewed Conflict in Libya

New York- With Khalifa Haftar suddenly very relevant again after his initially notable reappearance in Libya in March 2011,  Libya’s littoral is once against thrust into turmoil in both Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. Haftar is leading a fight against Ansar al-Sharia and Derna-based…

Syria’s Doomed Ceasefire

New York-One of the myriad topics was what constitutes or defines intervention in Syria.  A high-ranking NATO official explained to me at 2 2012 security conference that the Alliance was emphatically not going to get involved militarily in Syria even…

A Decade of War and Peace

Barcelona- Partly out of boredom and partly out of the itch to simply create something new out of old, I threw together this photo montage over the weekend. In this era of digital photography where one shoots thousands of frames…

Portraits of Libya

Barcelona- I finally was able to upload this Libya mash-up video I had been working on in NYC from here in Catalunya. For technical reasons beyond my knowledge or control, I was having a devil of a time getting the…

The Kalashnikov

New York- The Avtomat Kalashnikova assault rifle, known popularly as the AK-47 or Kalashnikov, became one of the defining symbols of Third World national liberation movements and a physical manifestation of anti-imperialist thought in the second half of the twentieth…

Daylight in Paris

Paris- I will be speaking at Maison de la Chimie tomorrow for the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique’s conference entitled “Dix ans après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001: bilan et perspectives de la lutte contre le terrorisme.” I will…

After War

Barcelona- It is never not a strange, sometimes awkward transition from a war in the third world to the oft petty tranquility of the first. Unable to get a flight from Tunis directly to Catalunya, my best bet was flying…

Images from Nalut Offensive

Nalut/Djerba- Well yesterday’s long promised rebel/NATO offensive against the nearby Qaddafists finally got underway and it was hell upon earth. The morning started out in a deadly quiet, still fog that obscured the Q controlled towns down on the plains…

8 Lives Left

Qwaleesh- Spent a strange, somewhat hostile day in Zintan yesterday trying for hours to get this permission paper that you now need as a journo in order to go forward through the main checkpoint to the front. Finally got the…