Sahara ! Sunset or Sunrise ?

Sahara ! Sunset or Sunrise ?

LiveWord? Libya

Mission

This independent project is for the People of Libya who are suffering! They are unable to keep contact with the outside world as they are slowly being choked off the social network sites. We intend to keep pulling in and pushing out news and updates from the affected regions so that they may have access. We are re-posting content and updates in English, French and Arabic for the People of Libya so they can share information with each other, you and the world!

We currently have a few projects and resources available for those interested in helping the People of Libya. Please keep an eye on the links section to the right for services available and let us know if we can add anything.

Please let us know if we can add any other Facebook feeds and PLEASE help us to help the Libyan People in their time of need! Be sure to bookmark and share this page http://liveword.ca/libya for reference.

We Need Volunteers to help organize the information and to let us know how to get the information where it is needed the most. Please consider taking a few minutes to archive duplicate information, sort posts by region, topic, language and we need translators that can work with Arabic, French and English, other translations are always welcome. Thanks!

LiveWord.ca is an example of how social media can help you connect and publish information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of LiveWord? Canada.

We even have a short url service, feed2script generator as well as a Wiki but she is still a baby so she needs a lot of attention. Are there any volunteers or contributors there?

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05/03/2011

22:57 Al Jazeera None of the Touareg Tribes have provided Gaddafi with militarysupport

Discussions on slavery are complex in Mali, with many people arguing it does not exist. Some Gao residents said individuals might stay with their "masters" more out of economic necessity than anything.

Today the Bella have become largely assimilated into Touareg culture, keeping similar cultural traditions and speaking the same language (Tamasheq), and many of the Bella are known as Black Tamasheq. The Touareg masters and the Bella people have lived in a complex caste system for many decades and some say little has changed in this power relationship - much of the northern region's property and livestock remains in the Touareg hands.

Most of the slavery in Mali, takes place between the Berber-descended Touaregs and the indigenous Bella people who live in this region, although the Peul and Songhai communities have also been known to use slaves in the past, according to Temedt.
Iddar Ag Ogazide, a Bella, said he lived as a slave in Ansongo, 80km south of Gao, where he worked for the Touareg Ag Baye family for 35 years without receiving a salary or an education. The Ag Bayes bought his great-grandmother and inherited his family members from one generation to the next. In March 2008 Iddar finally could not take any more and hatched a successful escape plan - he is currently living in Gao.

The Touareg used to hold slaves in their society, and used the slaves to work as herders and for other menial tasks. The practice was frowned upon by the French when they colonized the area, but there was no little effort to end it.
Martin Klein estimated in his book Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (1998) that there was estimated 50% of the
population in French Controlled Sudan were slaves. This estimate shows that slavery was so ingrained into society, that to end the practice suddenly would likely have caused widespread rebellion among the populace, which of course the French occupiers did not want. So instead acts were passed which abolished slavery, but there was no effort to enforce the new law.