Gaddafi's "Luck"

Definitive disclaimer: I am deeply concerned for the noble people of Japan who have in the past five days faced three interconnected cataclysms of unimaginable duress. We should help in any way we can as individuals, communities and nations. This said, I was stupefied when this morning's flagship CBC newscast, World Report covered nothing, zilch, nada - not 10 seconds about the continuing free hand Qaddafi is having rolling over the Libyan citizenry, using advanced weapons he bought from the west and Russia and China with profits gained from selling us all oil, developed with the expertise of our corporations.

The result is that the public here - and I fully imagine the same is true in Europe and the USA - is having its always deficient attention riveted on the quake, the tsunami, and the failing nuclear power plants while losing any zeal it had to urge our feckless leaders to do something tough in Libya. Qaddafi's henchmen are rolling east, behind air-power that ought to have been knocked out weeks ago. The noose is closing on Libyan citizens who are soon going to wish they lived in the stricken prefectures of northeastern Japan.

When the smoke clears from all this tumult there are going to be millions of traumatized Japanese who we will help and smugly feel good about ourselves for doing so; and there are going to be no fewer Libyans, murdered or reincarcerated in a brutal state and by a lucky madman whom we could have helped them get rid of.