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Old 10-25-2011, 07:34 AM   #9
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
If you want to read about it from someone who went there two years ago:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archive...he-land-of.php

Quote:
I met one shopkeeper who opened right up when he and I found ourselves alone in his store.
...
"And Qaddafi is our president," he said. "About him, no comment." He laughed, but I don't think he thought it was funny.

"Oh, come on," I said. "Comment away. I don't live here."

He thought about that. For a long drawn-out moment, he calculated the odds and weighed the consequences. Then the dam burst.

"We hate that fucking bastard, we have nothing to do with him. Nothing. We keep our heads down and our mouths shut. We do our jobs, we go home. If I talk, they will take me out of my house in the night and put me in prison.

"Qaddafi steals," he told me. "He steals from us." He spoke rapidly now, twice as fast as before, as though he had been holding back all his life. He wiped sweat off his forehead with trembling hands. "The oil money goes to his friends. Tunisians next door are richer and they don't even have any oil."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."

"We get three or four hundred dinars each month to live on. Our families are huge, we have five or six children. It is a really big problem. We don't make enough to take care of them. I want to live in Lebanon. Beirut is the second Paris. It is civilized! Women and men mix freely in Lebanon."
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