Eccentric Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shouted and pounded his fist on the table while insisting he would die as a martyr rather than leave his position as head of the country during a speech on Tuesday. “I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired … when I do, everything will burn,” he said. It was Gaddafi's first major speech since demonstrations broke out in the North African country over a week ago, following the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. BBC described Gaddafi as “defiant and angry,” while the New York Daily News called his speech “a vintage performance from an eccentric leader.” Just a day earlier, Gaddafi kept viewers waiting nearly two hours to hear him speak – and then sat in his jeep with an umbrella over his head and talked about the weather for twenty seconds. Increasingly, Libyans are calling Gaddafi out of touch with the people, a claim angry Egyptians also made of Mubarak before his resignation, which was announced by Egypt's recently appointed Vice President, Omar Suleiman, on February 11. In his Tuesday speech, Gaddafi insisted that the demonstrations were “serving the devil” and the demonstrators were given drugs and alcohol. “Come out of your homes, attack them in their dens,” he said. “Withdraw your children from the streets. They are drugging your children; they are making your children drunk and sending them to hell.” Gaddafi also warned that the country could fall into civil war or be occupied by the United States if protests continued, promising that “if matters require, we will use force, according to international law and the Libyan constitution.” Already Libya has resorted to force. According to reports from human rights groups, over 300 people have been killed so far during the demonstrations. Solidarity demonstrations across the world have been calling for an end to the “massacre” in Libya. In a phone interview with Bikya Masr on Tuesday morning, 24-year-old Sara said, “We can't leave, we can't go anywhere because it is too dangerous.” “We can hear the violence and the war crimes in the distance. The world must help us,” she continued. “If the world stands by and allows so many people to die when they could intervene, what does that say of our planet?” In Libya and at solidarity demonstrations across the globe, demonstrators have unearthed the former Libyan flag, which has been banned in the forty years of Gaddafi's rule. The NY Daily News reported that the historic flag flew over many buildings in Libya's coastal city of Tobruq. At a solidarity demonstration in front of the Libyan Embassy in Cairo on Monday, a young Libyan woman now living in Cairo insisted that the old flag was a symbol of the true Libya, saying Libyans would never have a green flag or green anything anymore – a not-so-subtle reference to Gaddafi's ‘Green Book,' which outlines his views on democracy and his political philosophy. Gaddafi has been in power in Libya since 1969, when a coup d'état overthrew the government. In 1972, he renounced the title of Prime Minister and has since adopted honorifics such as “Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.” Gaddafi is known for his eccentricity and outrageous statements. In an hour-and-a-half long speech to the United Nations in New York in 2009, Gaddafi defended Somali pirates, accused Israel of assassinating former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, and called Barack Obama a “son of Africa.” BM
