An Urban Wasteland

That's the only way to describe the Tripoli on view in the pictures brought back by Michael Totten. Ghaddafi's megalomania has wrecked havoc on what used to be an interesting city.

Comments

[razib]

funny quote: "Much of the Sahara is a vast arid plain." yeah :)

i've had several relatives who did stints as petrol engineers in tripoli. they liked it. barren, but not as stinky as dhaka.

[Abiola Lapite]

Isn't the constant sighting of posters of Ghaddafi creepy as all hell, though? Libya looks to me like the sort of place where you have to watch your every word for fear of being carted away by the security services - I remember Michael Palin finding it impossible to get Libyans to talk to him on record in Sahara.

[razib]

well, bangladesh has a *little too much political* freedom.* anyway, they pay foreign engineers well, one of my uncles took a break from working for 5 years after going back to bangladesh (he bought several houses, yada, yada).

* the political parties basically are armed gangs and constantly riot and cause public disturbances.