Libyan Desert Glass is strewn over an area of hundreds of square kilometers in the Great Sand Sea, a region desolate even by the high standards of the Sahara. As
one account of a recent trip to acquire Libyan Desert Glass puts it: "Out there, death sits on your shoulder like a vulture." While some would have you believe that Libyan Desert Glass is
evidence of ancient atomic warfare, it is probably evidence of a
massive meteorite or comet explosion nearly thirty million years ago, similar to Tunguska, but much bigger. The stone age Aterian peoples made
tools from it, but the remoteness and inhospitality of the Great Sand Sea has ensured that until recent times it has mostly been undisturbed. However, a
breast ornament buried in Tutankhamen's tomb has a scarab made from Libyan Desert Glass, the only piece made of the material to have been found by Egyptologists, and
how Tutankhamen's jewelers acquired it has remained a mystery. Until
now.
[Previously]
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 8, 2011 -
38 comments
We got through the basics—how I’d arrived in Libya, why I was there—in civil tones. Then the Inspector asked, “If you were a professor at Harvard, why did you quit your job to come risk your life in Libya?” I explained as best I could that I had not been a professor but a graduate student, and part of my training was teaching undergraduates. The academic job market was tough and demoralizing, and the rigidity of the academic lifestyle had never appealed to me that much anyway. I had suspected for a few years that I’d be temperamentally better suited to working as a reporter. “Why you work journalist? You don’t study journalism, you study history!”
—
What I Lost in Libya by Clare Morgana Gillis, a journalist who was captured by Gadhafi forces.
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 6, 2011 -
12 comments
The death of Ghaddafi may also herald the end of the battle for the
Aouzou Strip." You could call this 44,000 square-mile piece of desert the world’s largest sandbox. Its most remarkable feature is that it was deemed worthy to be fought over at all." (NYT)
posted by Xurando
on Nov 8, 2011 -
19 comments
[...]There was still talk of snipers, of a counterattack by Qaddafi’s men, of a fifth column of “sleeper cells” lurking inside the capital. Victory had come too easily. Only weeks earlier, the rebels seemed in disarray, and Qaddafi’s forces, having withstood more than four months of NATO air strikes, seemed poised to hold out for many more. Then, on Aug. 20, a planned uprising broke out in Tripoli, as the ragged rebel army converged on the city from various directions. The final battle, expected to last weeks, was over in two days. Qaddafi and his top lieutenants fled almost immediately. Now it was hard to know who was a killer and who a mere dupe.
[...]
The Surreal Ruins of Quaddafi's Never-Never Land, Robert F. Worth
(Note: nytimes. Via longform.com)
posted by JHarris
on Sep 22, 2011 -
13 comments
The Crimes of Col. Qaddafi An original essay by Christopher Hitchens, that starts:
In George Orwell's 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air, his narrator, George Bowling, broods on the special horrors of the new totalitarianism and notices "the colored shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons," but also, less obviously perhaps, "the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke."
posted by growabrain
on Aug 26, 2011 -
57 comments
The Battle For Tripoli Begins:
In the last few hours, news outlets and Twitter have been abuzz with reports of fighting around Tripoli. The Libyan rebel council is claiming that “zero hour” has started and a major offensive to take the city is beginning.
[more inside]
posted by metaplectic
on Aug 20, 2011 -
403 comments
In a 32 page
report to Congress [pdf] President Obama concludes:
...the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent
with the War Powers Resolution and do not under that law require
further congressional authorization, because U.S. military
operations are distinct from the kind of “hostilities”
contemplated by the Resolution’s 60 day termination provision.
Now, the
New York Times reports that this legal opinion was reached by rejecting the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department. It is instructive to
compare President Obama's actions with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
[more inside]
posted by ennui.bz
on Jun 20, 2011 -
240 comments
From Vice Magazine (NSFW photos in sidebar):
The New Libyans: Knee-deep in the Shit with Benghazi's New Rebels, by Trevor Snapp. (warning: gory photo)
More photos of the New Libyans from
Trevor Snapp. Also from Vice, on Libya:
Big Muammar's House. Also on Vice, on Libya:
Notes from a Libyan Lurker,
part 2,
part 3,
part 4,
part 5,
part 6,
part 7,
part 8,
part 9,
part 10,
part 11.
posted by Sticherbeast
on May 3, 2011 -
4 comments
Before Qaddafi, the closest thing to a national icon that Libya had was
Omar Mukhtar, the Lion of the Desert. Mussolini thought of Libya as the
Fourth Shore of Italy; the natives were not pleased with this idea, and under the leadership of Mukhtar, a school teacher, successfully resisted the Italians for twenty years with almost no resources. Italian rule in Libya was harsh: Libyans were rounded up into
concentration camps, tanks and
aerial bombardment were used against civilians, and half of the population of Cyrenaica - the eastern part of Libya - died. To stop Mukhtar from receiving supplies from Egypt, the Italians built a
168-mile long barbed-wire fence essentially dividing the country in two. Mukhtar was finally captured and hung on September of 1931; he remains a
symbol of Libyan independence.
[more inside]
posted by with hidden noise
on May 1, 2011 -
15 comments
"The United Nations-authorized intervention in Libya has pitched ethical issues of the highest importance, and has split progressives in unfortunate ways. I hope we can have a calm and civilized discussion of the rights and wrongs here." Professor
Juan Cole of the University of Michigan writes
An Open Letter to the Left on Libya.
posted by dvorak_beats_qwerty
on Mar 27, 2011 -
253 comments
Libya: Six injured as US team botches rescue of downed airmen. 'US forces sent into Libya to rescue two downed American airmen botched the mission by shooting and wounding friendly villagers who had come to help, witnesses have said. Libyans who went to investigate the US warplane's crash site said that a US helicopter had come in with guns firing, creating panic and wounding onlookers, some of whom had to be taken to hospital; one 20-year-old man is expected to have his leg amputated.'
[more inside]
posted by VikingSword
on Mar 22, 2011 -
127 comments
The
Légion Étrangère is a French special forces unit comprised mostly of foreign nationals who wish to fight for France, and the promise of a French citizenship. They are today considered an elite unit, on par with or superior to the British SAS or Russian Spetsnaz, and have in their long history served in campaigns as far-flung as
Mexico and
Vietnam, but are most famous for their image as colonial shock-troops in North Africa and the Middle East. Legionnaire fought Legionnaire in the Second World War during the
Syria-Lebanon Campaign, as the Vichy's 6e Régiment Étrangère d'Infanterie lined up against the Allied 13e Demi-Brigade de Légion Étrangère in a critical, yet unsung battle for North Africa. Their first campaign was in
Algeria - will their latest be in Libya?
posted by Slap*Happy
on Mar 19, 2011 -
47 comments
February 25, 2011: Vogue calls her "a rose in the desert": "
Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies."
(Wikipedia about her
husband: "He has been criticized for his disregard for human rights, economic lapses, sponsorship of terrorism, and corruption.")
[more inside]
posted by iviken
on Feb 27, 2011 -
25 comments
2210 GMT: Libya's 2nd Secretary in its Embassy in China, Hussein Sadiq Al Misrati, has just quit in an on-air interview with Al Jazeera, saying he is not honored to represent a regime that kills its own people. Al Misrati asked other diplomats to follow his action and called on the army not to attack protesters. And the diplomat claimed that Muammar Qaddafi's son Saif Al Islam, who was supposed to speak on State TV tonight, will not do so --- he was shot by his brother Mutasam in a fight for control. Libya is spinning out of control and appears to be on the verge of either collapse or civil war. Here is a
relatively comprehensive (but by no means exhaustive) link to the unrest of the past week. Unlike Egypt, which saw the downfall of a regime played out on television and the internet, communication in and out of Libya is extremely restrictive, making it very difficult for the media and outside observers to understand just what, exactly, is going on in the country.
Hundreds of protesters have so far died (many in the second-largest city of Benghazi), and rumors abound that some in the military have decided to turn against the regime.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates
on Feb 20, 2011 -
1138 comments
A mixtape of tracks by North African hip hop artists from Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, music which reflects the current zeitgeist in the region. To listen and/or download (zip):
enoughgaddafi.com
posted by Mister Bijou
on Feb 7, 2011 -
15 comments
Colonel Muammar al-Gadaffi, Leader and Guide of the Revolution, has been consulting with two US-based PR / lobbying companies—
The Livingston Group (Sourcewatch) and
Monitor (
Sourcewatch)—to effect the rebranding of Gadaffi's Libya as a desirable and trustworthy ally of the United States. Confidential documents from these consultations have been
obtained and posted online by a Libyan opposition group called NCLO. They include fee quotes, progress reports, and mission plans, as well as a personal tutorial curriculum for Gaddafi's son. Via
LRBlog [more inside]
posted by stammer
on Jul 29, 2009 -
27 comments
Libya is a desert, yes, but if you trace your fingers through the moonlit sand and listen, carefully, you may hear ancient whispers: of
Apollo's love of Cyrene; of prehistoric hunters making Rock Art [
1,
2,
3], back when the Sahara was wet; of Phoenicians subdued by Greeks, of Romans followed by Byzantines, all leaving
ruins that Libya is famous for [
Cyrene,
Leptis Magna,
Sabratha,
et cetera]; of desert soldiers in World War II, remembered in
Graves and
Memorials; of the occupying Italians, who responded to
Omar Mukhtar's resistance of the Fascists by rounding Libyans into
concentration camps; of the camps' prisoners, one of whom wrote this
famous poem: "My only illness is the torturing of our young women, with their bodies exposed ... how my speech has become subdued, the humiliation of our noble and leading men and the loss of my gazelle-like horse..."; of
more culture, more
memories from this land that witnessed the wrenching passion of all man's history—whispering in the very dust that made his soul.
posted by Firas
on May 14, 2007 -
18 comments
From performing in a
concert for Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, to serving as background music for the shock-and-awe bombing of Baghdad,
Lionel Richie is much beloved throught the Arab world. A
Nightline piece, and an upcoming GQ magazine article
(via NPR) examine the Lionel of Arabia phenomenon.
posted by jaimev
on Dec 4, 2006 -
17 comments
"
Injection is the real-life story of six health care workers falsely accused and jailed by an Arab dictator [
^], the deplorable conditions that led to their arrest, and the simple solution that might have prevented not only this injustice, but millions of needless infections. " [
full movie at google video]
posted by tnai
on Oct 4, 2006 -
7 comments
The Swiss are investigating an international smuggling ring suspected of providing nuclear program components to Libya. There's just one
problem. Meanwhile, the United States is opening full diplomatic relations with
Libya and removing it from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
posted by EarBucket
on Jun 2, 2006 -
16 comments
Damning leak for Blair / Bush! A leaked transcript of a senior British government meeting indicates that the Bush administration viewed war with Iraq as
"inevitable" as of July 2002, even though the rationale for war was
"thin" and that
"Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." It further states that the desire to bring about regime change was
"not a legal base for military action", and that the only legitimate reason to declare war was with UNSCOM approval. Most disturbingly, it indicates that there were
"strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change."
posted by insomnia_lj
on May 1, 2005 -
139 comments
On the night of April 27th, 1805,
US Marine Lt. Presley O'Bannon
led a ragtag army of Greek, Arab and Berber mercenaries in a desperate charge
into the teeth of the fortifications of
Derna, Tripoli
(now Libya). The
defenders inexplicably turned and ran, leaving behind loaded cannons which,
turned around, secured victory for the US in its first land battle in the old
world.
In recognition of his bravery, Lt. O'Bannon was given a
sword by Hamet
Karamanli.
William
Eaton
(no, the other
William Eaton
) had led O'Bannon,
six other US Marines, and the five hundred odd mercenaries across six hundred
miles of North African desert in order to replace the usurping
Pasha
of Tripoli, Yusef, with the rightful heir, his pro-American older brother
Hamet.
Shortly after the battle, Yusef reached a peace with Col. Tobias Lear, the
American Consul to Tripoli, and hostilities between the US and Tripoli ceased. Eaton, O'Bannon, and
Hamet Karamanli, along with the Marines and most of the Greeks, departed
aboard American warships, leaving the Muslim mercenaries behind in Derna.
Unpaid.
posted by hob
on Jan 7, 2004 -
11 comments
