Gaddafi: Still Crazy After All These Years

Fred Halliday, at Open Democracy, depicts the problems that can arise in a nation subject to a Cult of Personality - particularly when the key figure's personality is seriously warped. While not at all downplaying the violence and murderous history of the Gaddafi regime, Halliday also manages to bring out some of the more farcical elements of the Libyan strongman's rule. Here's a taste:

There are many measures of the regime's failure...The first I witnessed during a visit to Tripoli in 2002, whose official programme inevitably included a visit to the "World Centre for Green Book Studies" (though it was a pleasant surprise to find in a bookshop near my hotel that of the thirty-four translations of the book made available, the most prominently displayed were those in Hebrew and in Esperanto). Colonel Gaddafi was so enamoured of the idea of "green" that he even considered naming the main government building in Tripoli the "Green House", until its English gardening connotations were pointed out. More reminiscent of other revolutionary trajectories was his renaming of the months of the year (the Roman words being too reminiscent of the Italian imperial yoke), and his attempt to replace all English words by Arabic (even such good friends of the people as "Johnny Walker" [Hanah Mashi] and "7 Up" [Saba'a Fauq].

Here's another:

The chaotic management system then prevailing was revealed in the announcement that on a particular Sunday there would be a meeting of ministers, in effect a cabinet meeting: but since Libya officially has no capital city, no one knew where this would be held, and senior officials and their advisers spent hours driving around the desert from one place to another trying to find out where they were supposed to meet.

A superb read.

BTW, does anybody know whether Gaddafi is still planning on coming to the U.S.? I'm working on a Detective Paco story based on that premise, but I need to know for sure (if he isn't coming, what am I supposed to do with this baby camel and Wronwright's hot 'n spicy bean burritos?)