Ryan Calder
The go-to 'Army of Davids' blog for the inside scoop on Libya is, at the moment, revolutionology observations by a sociologist in Libya
"I’m a sociologist from the University of California, Berkeley doing field research on the uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring. After traveling through eastern Libya between March 15 and March 21 (Benghazi, Tubruq, Benghazi again, and Al-Marj) and then leaving Libya for a few days, I returned to Benghazi again last night (March 25). This time, I’m keeping a blog of my observations, which are based on interviews (mostly with ordinary Libyans, and occasionally with officials from the interim revolutionary government) and ethnography."
Sample:
And what’s going on here, anyway? Is this a revolution? Is it a video game? A civil war? A tourist site? What does it mean that these people are here, in a battlefield that’s not a battlefield, inspecting the charred remnants of the state machine that oppressed them for 41 years, videotaping these tanks, climbing on top of them, holding up Vs-for-victory and snapping photos of their kids?
Shit, what am I doing here?
.... I ask Fatih how he feels seeing these bombed-out tanks.
“How do I feel? I feel great – I feel like celebrating. Look, if the French and the Americans hadn’t bombed these tanks, do you know where they’d be right now? In Benghazi. The city would be destroyed by now. My whole famiglia would be dead.”
For a second, I think I’m in The Godfather Part Two. But this is a serious conversation.
"For a second, I think I’m in The Godfather Part Two. But this is a serious conversation."
That's what clan and tribal politics is.
Posted by: Mikey NTH at March 28, 2011 11:15 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.
HOME