Reuters

By Ali Shuaib and Salah Sarrar

TRIPOLI, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Palestinian refugees should capitalise on the wave of popular revolts in the Middle East by massing peacefully on the borders of Israel until it gives in to their demands, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Sunday.

Gaddafi is respected in many parts of the Arab world for his uncompromising criticism of Israel and Arab leaders who have dealings with the Jewish state, though some people in the region dismiss his initiatives as unrealistic.

He was giving his first major speech since a popular uprising in neighbouring Egypt forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign, an event which electrified the Arab world and prompted speculation that other Arab governments could also be toppled.

"Fleets of boats should take Palestinians ... and wait by the Palestinian shores until the problem is resolved," Gaddafi was shown saying on state television. "This is a time of popular revolutions."

"We need to create a problem for the world. This is not a declaration of war. This is a call for peace," he said in a speech given to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohamed, a holy day in the Islamic calendar.

He also said: "All Arab states which have relations with Israel are cowardly regimes."

Palestinians have long demanded that refugees who fled or were forced to leave in the war of Israel's creation in 1948 should be allowed to return, along with their descendants.

Israel says any resettlement of Palestinian refugees must occur outside of its borders.

ISLAMIST MILITANTS

Gaddafi also issued a call to Muslim countries to join forces against Western powers. He said the world was divided into white, denoting the United States, Europe and their allies, and green for the Muslim world.

"The white colour has decided to get rid of the green colour," Gaddafi said. "These countries should be united against the white colour because all of these white countries are the enemies of Islam."

He said violent acts committed by Osama Bin Laden's al Qaeda network went against Islam because they killed innocent people. But he said there was a political explanation for the emergence of militant Islamists.

"Why did this movement emerge? Regardless of its behaviour, in my analysis this movement appeared in response to the American arrogance towards the Islamic nation and in response to its hegemony of the Islamic world," Gaddafi said.

"It was a response to ... the submission of rulers in the Islamic world, the subservience of rulers in the Islamic world to this arrogance from Europe and the United States," he said.

Gaddafi has for decades challenged what he describes as Western imperialism. His oil exporting country spent years under international sanctions for seeking banned weapons and sponsoring militant groups.

These were lifted in 2004 when Gaddafi renounced his previous activities, though he still frequently deploys his colourful rhetoric against the West. (Additional reporting by Souhail Karam in Rabat; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Jon Boyle)

More From Reuters

Military rulers suspend Egyptian constitution

Egypt cabinet to stay for transition period

Algeria police stifle Egypt-inspired protest

Uncoverage.net

UNCOVERAGE.net at CPAC 2011: Blog Archives and Speeches

CPAC: Libertarian Youth Group Expels Ron Paul for Being “Delusional” Fringe

Bloodless Coup By Design — Or is It?

Chelsea and Marc: The Honeymoon (Marriage?) is OVER

GOP Congress Cuts Funds for All New EPA Regulations

CPAC SideShow: Obama’s in the Bathroom…and Here’s My Shoe.

Ron Paul and the Paulettes get TRUMPED by the Donald

NY Times

Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — The anniversary will probably be observed in silence.

A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument.

If he is true to form, Justice Thomas will spend the arguments as he always does: leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes, whispering to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, consulting papers and looking a little irritated and a little bored. He will ask no questions.

In the past 40 years, no other justice has gone an entire term, much less five, without speaking at least once during arguments, according to Timothy R. Johnson, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Justice Thomas’s epic silence on the bench is just one part of his enigmatic and contradictory persona. He is guarded in public but gregarious in private. He avoids elite universities but speaks frequently to students at regional and religious schools. In those settings, he rarely dwells on legal topics but is happy to discuss a favorite movie, like “Saving Private Ryan.”

He talks freely about the burdens of the job.

“I tend to be morose sometimes,” he told the winners of a high school essay contest in 2009. “There are some cases that will drive you to your knees.”

Justice Thomas has given various and shifting reasons for declining to participate in oral arguments, the court’s most public ceremony.

He has said, for instance, that he is self-conscious about the way he speaks. In his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” he wrote that he had been teased about the dialect he grew up speaking in rural Georgia. He never asked questions in college or law school, he wrote, and he was intimidated by some fellow students.

Elsewhere, he has said that he is silent out of simple courtesy.

“If I invite you to argue your case, I should at least listen to you,” he told a bar association in Richmond, Va., in 2000.

Justice Thomas has also complained about the difficulty of getting a word in edgewise. The current court is a sort of verbal firing squad, with the justices peppering lawyers with questions almost as soon as they begin their presentations.

In the 20 years that ended in 2008, the justices asked an average of 133 questions per hourlong argument, up from about 100 in the 15 years before that.

“The post-Scalia court, from 1986 onward, has become a much more talkative bench,” Professor Johnson said. Justice Antonin Scalia alone accounted for almost a fifth of the questions in the last 20 years.

Justice Thomas has said he finds the atmosphere in the courtroom distressing. “We look like ‘Family Feud,’ ” he told the bar group.

Justice Thomas does occasionally speak from the bench, when it is his turn to announce a majority opinion. He reads from a prepared text, and his voice is a gruff rumble.

He does not take pains, as some of his colleagues do, to explain the case in conversational terms to the civilians in the courtroom. He relies instead on legal Latin and citations to subparts of statutes and regulations.

His attitude toward oral arguments contrasts sharply with that of his colleagues, who seem to find questioning the lawyers who appear before them a valuable way to sharpen the issues in the case, probe weaknesses, consider consequences, correct misunderstandings and start a conversation among the justices that will continue in their private conferences.

By the time the justices hear arguments, they have read briefs from the parties and their supporters, and most justices say it would be a waste of time to have advocates merely repeat what they have already said in writing.

“If oral argument provides nothing more than the summary of the brief in monologue, it is of very little value to the court,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in 1987.

Lawyers who appear before the court and scholars who study it are of mixed minds about Justice Thomas’s current silence. His views can be idiosyncratic, and some say lawyers deserve a chance to engage him before being surprised by an opinion setting out a novel and sweeping legal theory.

Others say they are just as happy not to waste valuable argument time on distinctive positions unlikely to command a majority in major cases.

Justice Thomas routinely issues sweeping concurrences and dissents addressing topics that had not come up at argument.

He asked no questions, for instance, in a 2007 case about high school students’ First Amendment rights. In a concurrence, he said he would have overturned the key precedent to rule that “the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools.”

Neither side had advanced that position. The basis for and implications of his concurrence were not explored at the arguments, because, by asking no questions, Justice Thomas did not tip his hand.

No other justice joined Justice Thomas’s opinion. “If Justice Thomas holds a strong view of the law in a case, he should offer it,” David A. Karp, a veteran journalist and third-year law student, wrote in the Florida Law Review in 2009. “Litigants could then counter it, or try to do so. It is not enough that Justice Thomas merely attend oral argument if he does not participate in argument meaningfully.”

Justice Thomas’s last question from the bench, on Feb. 22, 2006, came in a death penalty case. He was not particularly loquacious before then, but he did speak a total of 11 times earlier in that term and the previous one.

His few questions were typically pithy and pointed. He pressed a defense lawyer, for instance, in a 2005 argument about possible race discrimination in jury selection.

“Is there anything in the record to alert us to the race of the prosecutor?” he asked. “Would it make any difference? There seemed to be some suggestion that there are stereotypes at play.”

Justice Thomas’s most famous comments also came in a case involving race.

In a 2002 argument over a Virginia law banning cross burning, his impassioned reflections changed the tone of the discussion and may well have altered the outcome of the case. He recalled “almost 100 years of lynching” in the South by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups.

“This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a symbol of that reign of terror,” he said. “It was intended to cause fear and to terrorize a population.”

The court ruled that states may make it a crime to burn a cross if the purpose is intimidation.

More From The NY Times

By the CNN Wire Staff

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Egypt's military dissolved parliament and will run the country for six months or until elections are held, it said in a statement Sunday, two days after President Hosni Mubarak resigned.

It is suspending the constitution and will appoint a committee to propose changes to it, the statement said, adding that the public will then get to vote on the amended constitution.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces can issue new laws during the transition period, according to the statement on state television.

The government is now reporting to the military high command in the same way it reported to Mubarak before he stepped down, the prime minister confirmed shortly before the military statement was read.

The restoration of security and normal life is the government's priority, Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said, as troops began trying to clear protesters from Tahrir Sqaure, the spiritual heart of the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak after 30 years.

That could take time, Shafiq acknowledged in his first comments to the press since Mubarak stepped down.

"The feeling of the lack of security which started when the situation began has to end," he said. "It will end gradually, but not as fast as we want."

He also said he was reviewing candidates to fill vacant government ministries, adding that no one who was not acceptable to the public would be appointed. His remarks were carried live on state television.

A prominent Egyptian activist credited with helping spark the revolution warned against taking too long.

"Biggest mistake now is to give the Egyptian people too little too slow. Restoring confidence requires a faster pace," Wael Ghonim said on Twitter.

Crowds of uniformed police officers joined demonstrations in Cairo on Sunday, with protesters carrying officers on their shoulders amid cheers of "police and people are one."

One policeman said they wanted higher pay, claiming that the army is paid four times as much as the police. Several hundred were protesting at the Ministry of the Interior, some in uniform and some in plain clothes.

The scene came as a contrast to the violent clashes between demonstrators and police that took place during the initial days of protests prior to Mubarak's resignation from the presidency.

But there were angry shouts from some in the crowd when members of the army tried to move people from Tahrir Square.

Tahrir appeared less crowded Sunday than in previous days, though some Egyptians have vowed to keep protesting until "Egypt is ruled by a civil government, not a military one."

But more signs of normalcy are sprouting up on the first regular work day without Mubarak as president. For the first time since demonstrators took control of Tahrir Square, traffic in the area flowed freely.

Sunday marks the traditional start of the work week in Egypt. By Sunday morning, the majority of shops around Tahrir were open.

Egyptian activist Ghonim wrote on his Twitter page: "Dear Egyptians, Go back to your work on Sunday, work like never before and help Egypt become a developed country."

A mass of young people gathered outside the ministry of natural gas on Sunday to fill out applications, some leaning on cars to do so.

As thousands reveled in their revolution over the weekend, the nation's newly appointed military caretakers laid out priorities Saturday geared at establishing stability -- though they revealed little to elucidate the future.

The Armed Forces Supreme Council said Saturday it was committed to a democratic process resulting in civilian rule.

"The armed forces council calls on the people to cooperate with the policemen," Lt. Gen. Sami Anan, who some see as a potential presidential candidate, said on state television. "We ask our policemen to adhere to their slogan: Police is at the people's service."

In the immediate future, the military -- largely respected by Egyptians -- will have to grapple with guiding the country of more than 80 million people through the transition amid massive problems of unemployment and economic underdevelopment.

The African nation virtually shut down during the unrest, losing vital tourism dollars as well.

Businessmen near the famed Pyramids said about 50,000 people are employed in the tourism industry.

"Young boys 17 years old and 18 years old, they want to say, 'We are hungry, we want to eat, we want to work,'" one businessman, Ayman el Myonir, said Saturday.

Patrons at a coffee shop in central Cairo said they now feel free to speak honestly about Egypt's political problems.

"I am happy and sad," said one customer named Fateh. "I am sad because this is the president who carried us through wars and tough times."

He said the turning point came when Mubarak supporters -- some of whom wielded whips -- rode horses and camels into the Tahrir Square crowd.

On Saturday, a marble memorial was being erected to remember those who died in the uprising. Human Rights Watch has documented 302 deaths, a number the monitoring group called conservative.

Anan, the armed forces chief of staff, said Egypt would still honor international treaties and commitments -- a statement perhaps aimed at calming a jittery Israel that has quietly watched dramatic change unfold in its Arab ally.

"Egypt is a country of institutions and it honors its legal obligations," Sameh Shoukry, Egyptian ambassador to the United States, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Saturday. The revolution is something "all Egyptians are proud of," the diplomat said.

Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979. On Saturday, Israelis welcomed the Egyptian statement. Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke on the phone with his Egyptian counterpart Hussein Tantawi, who heads the supreme council, the Israeli Defense Ministry said.

But how long Egypt would continue under military rule remained unclear.

Egypt's constitution allows for only two scenarios if a head of state to relinquish power. The first stipulates that if the president has to step aside temporarily, the vice president steps into the top role. That is what Mubarak's regime briefly orchestrated Thursday.

If the office of the president is vacated or the president becomes permanently disabled, the constitution states that the parliamentary speaker is to assume the role until new elections can be held. Those elections, in turn, must occur within 60 days.

But Mubarak's regime put all power in the hands of the military -- which, in effect, rendered the constitution inoperable.

Anan, who serves as spokesman for the Armed Forces Supreme Council, said Saturday the current government would remain in place until a new one could be formed.

Several high-ranking government officials -- including the former prime minister and interior minister -- were facing lawsuits and were barred from traveling out of the country, state television reported, citing a judiciary source.

But some analysts were sounding the alarm over the takeover by the military, which has suddenly become accountable for the nation. Analysts with Stratfor, a global intelligence company, said Egypt had essentially experienced a coup.

"Egypt is returning to the 1952 model of ruling the state via a council of army officers," the Stratfor statement said. "The question now is to what extent the military elite will share power with its civilian counterparts."

But even as officials hash out the details of Egypt's murky political future, public demands for change rippled throughout the region.

In the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, protesters chanted Saturday: "Yesterday Tunisia, today Egypt -- tomorrow Yemen will open the prison."

And in restive Algeria, anti-government protesters chanted "Change the power" on Saturday. But security forces clashed with the crowds Saturday in Algiers and detained roughly 100 protesters, according to the opposition Algerian League for Human Rights.

 CNN Recommends

The Hill

By Shane D'Aprile

Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) gave a speech to close this year's Conservative Political Action Conference that earned a more enthusiastic reaction from conservative activists than those given by most rumored 2012 presidential hopefuls over the past three days.

The first-term congressman brought the audience to its feet several times late Saturday, repudiating President Obama's social and economic policies and promising "a new dawn in America."West took the coveted speaking slot that was rejected by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who declined to attend CPAC for the fourth straight year.

West, who represents a district that voted for President Obama in 2008 and Sen. John Kerry in 2004, will be a top Democratic target next year and opened his speech by noting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already run a radio ad in his district.

West told the crowd that despite what the "liberal media" might say about his electoral vulnerability in 2012, "standing here before each and every one of you, I don't feel so vulnerable, do I."

West, who touted efforts by House Republicans to push for some $100 billion in spending cuts, offered a closing keynote that was chock full of red meat for the base.

West said now is the time to reform the tax code, lower taxes on business, eliminate the capital gains tax and fight for the adoption of a Constitutional balanced budget amendment.

"I say we start looking at every government agency and program that's been created in the last ten years, and let's start making some hard choices," said West, who received a loud cheer when he singled out the Environmental Protection Agency.

He said "liberal progressivism" has failed all over the world and he devoted a sizable portion of his speech to social issues, emphasizing his opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

"If you break down the American family, that leads to government dependency," said West.

On abortion, he said, "I do not believe having a baby is punishment."

West spoke of Friday's "historic moment" in Egypt with the resignation of longtime President Hosni Mubarak, but he held up the Iranian revolution as a cautionary tale and recalled the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"History has a way of teaching you a very bad lesson if we don't listen," he said.