Touring Libyan Blogs: Tony Blair, Watermelons, Shock and Awe and a Really Hot Summer · Global Voices
Fozia Mohamed

Certainly these last two days Tripoli has been abuzz with the talk about British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit. I have never seen such security displayed in my entire life. You could guess the guest of honour's itinerary from the security arrangement. If this is what Tony Blair gets then what will happen if Mr Bush decides to pay us a visit before he leaves the White House ?
Blogger Highlander is only interested in one aspect of Blair's trip, namely the fact that he visited the families of the Libyan children AIDS victims.
“It is a good PR move [..]as it is not often that I see sympathy or care shown to them in the media but only to the Bulgarian nurse and  not the Palestinian doctor.”
We have to thank General Graziani for the invention of the ‘shock and awe’ tactic which was pioneered on Libyans during  Italy's  fascist colonial past.
Gheriani has dug another historical gem, I urge you to read his post to witness the atrocities.
Below is an extract from what Dr. Asad whom Gheriani is quoting said :
“The Italians adopted the new tactics of making surprise raids by mechanized units on the Bedouin encampments, slaughtering man and beast indiscriminately, and destroying the grain stores, In these raids, on what in a noncolonial war would be regarded as the civilian population, the purpose was to kill as many of the Bedouin as possible, striking terror into the hearts of shepherd folk of Cyrenaica. When the rains came and mechanized transport could no longer be used, the camps were bombed and machine-gunned from the air.”
On another note there is new aggregator for Libyan bloggers in which Libyano  has encapsulated the essence of Libya with the icon he chose دلاع -‘the watermelon’ .
Lastly, I think that the Libyan bloggers like all other Libyans are busy or their family is busy with end of year exams. Either that or the summer which has dawned upon us with a bang  this week is affecting the blogging.  A friend told me it was 49 degree Celsius in the shade on Sunday. Well check Libyano's experience he posits it's going to be a hard summer:
I open the door
My face shrivels up
My hair sticks up
My forehead is dripping with sweat
My lips stick together
What a horrible day (my translation)