France Invades Mali

[garbon]

This is why I don't feel so bad that the West has a history of protecting stealing cultural artifacts.

http://news.yahoo.com/islamist-rebels-torch-timbuktu-manscript-library-mayor-104853300.html

Islamist rebels torch Timbuktu manuscript library

Islamist fighters fleeing Mali's ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu as French and Malian troops closed in set fire to a South African-funded library there containing thousands of priceless manuscripts, the city's mayor said on Monday.

"The rebels sit fire to the newly-constructed Ahmed Baba Institute built by the South Africans ... this happened four days ago," Halle Ousmane told Reuters by telephone from Bamako. He said he had received the information from his chief of communications who had travelled south from the city a day ago.

Ousmane was not able to immediately say how much the building had been damaged. French and Malian troops were securing the city on Monday.

The mayor said the Islamist rebels, who had occupied the fabled trading town since a Tuareg-led rebellion captured it on April 1 from government forces, also torched his office and the home of a member of parliament.

The Ahmed Baba Institute, one of several libraries and collections in the city containing fragile ancient documents dating back to the 13th century, is named after a Timbuktu-born contemporary of William Shakespeare and houses more than 20,000 scholarly manuscripts. Some were stored in underground vaults.

Fighters from the Islamist alliance in north Mali, which groups AQIM with Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine and AQIM splinter MUJWA, had also destroyed ancient shrines sacred to moderate Sufi Moslems, provoking international outrage.

They had also applied amputations for thieves and stoning of adulterers under sharia law.

[Duque de Bragança]

I keep thinking about how funny that is. Namely that the French get away doing the whole FL thing - arming a bunch of ex-maffia Russians and East Euros and giving them carte blanche to kill negroes.

It's not as simple as that
20 to 30 percent of the FFL is made from Frenchmen who claim to be Belgian, Swiss or Luxembourg because they run into trouble with French law enforcement.
Besides, trouble in Mali is also based on old grudges. Black Malians vs Tuaregs,Desert Moors and/or Arabs (dark-skinned so fair-skinned for Africans). The latter used to deal in the former before the official end of the slave trade during French colonisation.

Seems there are still remants of it anyways:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/oct/23/mali-conflict-freedom-slave-descendants-peril

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/06/mali-war-over-skin-colour

These Burkinabes felt aggrieved by the reputation of the Tuaregs for enslaving black Africans – a history that still plays itself out in the Tuareg caste system – where "Bella", dark-skinned members of the tribe who were once slaves, still occupy the lowest positions in Tuareg society.

It's difficult to unpick Tuareg views about their fair skin and whether this still translates into a sense of superiority over black Africans. Their neighbours obviously feel that little has changed since the days when the Tuareg regularly raided and pillaged black African pastoralists, and then kept their people as slaves.

[CountDeMoney]

This is why I don't feel so bad that the West has a history of stealing cultural artifacts. judicious use of deploying thermobaric munitions on Islamists.

[mongers]

SkyNews had film from the 'liberation' of Timbuktu, including a piece on the FFL paras who'd parachuted in to take the airfield this morning. 

Film here:
http://news.sky.com/story/1044015/mali-french-troops-advance-in-timbuktu

[Valmy]

This is why I don't feel so bad that the West has a history of protecting stealing cultural artifacts.

Since there are no Swedish-Norwegian Kitchen salesmen around to be outraged this time let me just say that is a tragedy.

[Eddie Teach]

I find it interesting that the South Africans are funding museums in Mali.

[Sheilbh]

I find it interesting that the South Africans are funding museums in Mali.

Yeah. They wanted to help preserve African culture so were funding big museums and preservation efforts

[mongers]

I find it interesting that the South Africans are funding museums in Mali.

Yeah. They wanted to help preserve African culture so were funding big museums and preservation efforts

Interesting stuff:
http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/


http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/blog/entry/is_destroying_timbuktus_heritage_un-islamic/

But Shamil Jeppie, director of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town, rejects the idea that this is about the kind of consistent ideology found in other groups we call Islamist. "These guys, you can't give them such cred," says Jeppie. "It's just thuggery." He says the locals had been resisting the fighters' authority, and he feels that the attacks on the shrines are a form of punishment. (Jeppie also reports that, so far, Timbuktu's great collections of Islamic manuscripts, which he studies, seem not to have been threatened.) The puritanical religious views that Ansar Dine claims to espouse, Jeppie says, derive from the relatively recent Wahhabi movement, "born in Arabia in the 18th century," and have been taught to today's fighters by patrons from Saudi Arabia.

[Ed Anger]

2e régiment étranger de parachutistes airdrop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5W9PKR6FdU&feature=youtu.be

[mongers]

Be in no doubt about the source of much of the instability in the region, the channel Four news reporter went to a house in near liberated Gao, which was used by the Islamists to make explosives.

Amongst the detritus the Malian soldier accompanying them found written material including records of payments to fighters and the source of the funds - records of money transfers from Saudi Arabia. 

See the report here:
http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/

[mongers]

2e régiment étranger de parachutistes airdrop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5W9PKR6FdU&feature=youtu.be

Thanks for that, I reposted it on facebook to the annoy the Occupiers. 

[mongers]

Liked this line from John Snow,channel 4 news:
"Bin Laden is dead, but the effluent of Al Qaeda is absolutely everywhere"

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Be in no doubt about the source of much of the instability in the region, the channel Four news reporter went to a house in near liberated Gao, which was used by the Islamists to make explosives.

Amongst the detritus the Malian soldier accompanying them found written material including records of payments to fighters and the source of the funds - records of money transfers from Saudi Arabia. 

See the report here:
http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/

that's gonna get covered up mightily fast

[Razgovory]

Liked this line from John Snow,channel 4 news:
"Bin Laden is dead, but the effluent of Al Qaeda is absolutely everywhere"

I was going to make a joke about water, but I assume they meant to say "effluent".  Who uses "effluent" like that?

[Eddie Teach]

People with Ivy/Oxbridge educations who want to show it off?