A very interesting 1-year-long saga ended today. I followed it closely from the beginning and would like to summarize it for you in my own words below: In Mid July 2008, Hannibal Gaddafi - the son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and his pregnant wife were arrested by the Geneva police (Switzerland's western French speaking part) on charges of arbitrary and severe physical and verbal abuse of two of the hotel's employees, a Moroccan man and a Tunisian woman. Hannibal Gaddafi had already a history of barbaric behavior during his journeys: in two other occasions, once in France other in Germany, domestic workers complained of unrestrained uncivilized behaviour by the couple. But in these cases, France and Germany just asked him politely to leave. In Switzerland I got 3 parking tickets for parking in my own private parking but with my wheels out of the marked parking lines(!!!): they are law-fanatics, and they made the "mistake" to arrest him, the law left no choice in that case. Two of Mr Gaddafi's bodyguards were also detained after they clashed with police making the arrests When Gaddafi senior heard the news, he was furious, particularly when he heard an account of what had happened from Aisha, his favourite daughter. According to a witness close to the Gaddafi clan, she told him Hannibal and Aline had been treated "like terrorists" and were held in a prison "worse than Abu Ghraib". "Honour must be saved," Gaddafi told his daughter. Accordingly, Gaddafi was not satisfied even when the complaining hotel employees dropped charges due to a money they received from Hannibal in compensation (250,000$ each), who subsequently was released from detention without a trial and returned to Libya. It is just as well that Libya has renounced its bid to acquire nuclear weapons. "If I had an atomic bomb I would wipe Switzerland off the map," Hannibal is reported to have remarked afterwards. But Gadaffi didn't have enough of the story. He totally stopped exporting Libyan oil (52% of the overall swiss oil) and purchasing goods from Switzerland, and the trade between the country dropped 90% in one month. He then withdrew more than 5 Billion $ of Libyan money from Swiss banks. And the worse is yet to come: he refused to allow two ABB engineers working on an infrastructure project for the Libyan government to exit from Libya, until an official apology will be announced. A year has passed. In recent weeks Gadaffi sharpened his words and called to "dismantle Switzerland into pieces". He called upon Germany, France, and Italy to annex the German, French and Italian speaking parts of Switzerland. (((side comment: Switzerland as a matter of fact exists with a history of over 700 years whereas "Libya" is another artificial 20th century invention, one of many in the Arab world who never had "national state countries" as we know them today.The big bunch of scattered tribes (="Arab nation") found themselves "unprepared" for the 20th century: reality dictated that "states" must be established. In yesterday's Iraq bombings as well as in this post, you see the results for modernity arriving on people who are not read for it yet))). Now we get to the sad ending of the affair happened today: Due to public pressure to release the two Engineers, and the (not too big) damage to the economy - which is what the Swiss value the most, the Swiss government have surrendered. Swiss president Rudolf Merz took on a surprise visit to Tripoli today where he declared in a press conference with "Prime minister" al-Mahmoudi: "Ich entschuldige mich beim libyschen Volk für die ungerechtfertigte Verhaftung von Hannibal Gaddafi" (I apologize deeply to the Libyan people for the unjustified arrest of Hannibal Gaddafi). Gaddafi did not even meet Merz in person nor shake his hand. In reply, Libya promised that the two Swiss Engineers will be able to return home by 1st of September, oil will be sold again to Switzerland, and Swiss companies will be allowed to trade with Libyans, and vice versa. Well.........errrrr............ at least you gotta admire the way the Arab dictators get things done I can't express my dissapointment from the Swiss: they behaved like coward bitches throughout the whole affair. Money is not everything there is in life! My References in making this post (beside what I remember from listening to the swiss radio/TV etc 1 year ago) http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1108981.html http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/schweiz/schweiz_libyen_merz_hans_rudolf_libyen_1.3380853.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...crisis-with-arrest-at-swiss-hotel-876809.html http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25937965-26040,00.html http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/07/23/53609.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7512925.stm http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE57J6AV20090820 p.s. Also today on the news with Libya: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/08/2009820114234872976.html Coming up soon on ChaosTrivia Special Edition (next time I get bored): The "cultural" adventures of Saddam Hussein's sons in Europe: loosing 3,000,000$ in the casino on a single night and asking papa for a bank wire of another 12,000,000$ for tommorrow's fun, group sex parties with the local hookers, abuse and torture of animals. so Stay Tuned
Lol this is actually fun just like the celebrity reality shows. You should start a blog like stuffrichpeoplelove.com (Maybe hedonisticexploitsofthepowerful ?)
and here is a link to an article called world's wost sons...http://www.watan.com/article/145-m_100/14233-the-worlds-worst-sons.html And of course today was the day that the guy who was arrested for blowing up the jet over Lockerbie Scotland, was let go, as a mercy action by the Scots. He returned to Libya and received a hero's welcome. The guy supposedly has pancreatic cancer with very little time left to live. It is an ugly and dangerous world out there.
It was suppose to be a humanitarian gesture. But I wonder if that guy ever thought of human lives when he bombed the jet. He should be left to die in prison IMHO.
Agree. wisdomtools: in other words, I think that "Humanitarian" gestures should be made with.... humans. Thanks for the nice link. p.s. Somebody mail them and recommend to use style="direction:ltr;text-align:left" when authoring pages in English
http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14270103 Recent story in the economist about gadaffi. Interesting. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...ed-suicidal-cows-throw-cliff-Switzerland.html And a little bit about more, this time about the cows in Switzerland The place where this happened, lauterbrunnen, is to my opinion one of the most beautiful places of the world. live couple of minutes drive away http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=lauterbrunnen&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g6 Makes me miss Switzerland a bit but there's no place as good as home !