North Africa

I had some kind of smart ass observation ready to post on here, but it doesn't seem particularly appropriate with some of what's going on in the world.  I don't know if people in the states are following what's been going on in N. Africa with Tunisia and Egypt, but their governments have been recently deposed, and it looks like Libya is next.


We've been watching the English language version of Al Jazeera here, the Arabic news channel based in Qatar.  The Libyan government has, at some point, cut off the internet to the country in an attempt to maintain order.  Al Jazeera responded by giving protesters and soldiers small handheld video cameras to take footage, which was then broadcast by the network.  There are multiple reports that Libya has used helicopter gunships to fire on crowds of protesters, and soldiers and paramilitaries are firing from cars.  Several hundred people have been reportedly killed, including several soldiers who were then killed and burned after refusing orders to fire onto the crowds.


I guess that horrible things are going on in the world is nothing new.  It's rare for me, however, that I can do more than glance at a headline or have an informal water cooler discussion.  In the last few weeks I've been interloping in a class called Islam, Conflict and the State that deals with recent tensions in the Mid-East.  The lectures have been quite good, and I'm kicking myself for not taking this class from the beginning.  Last week the professor discussed the difference between Sunni and Shiite muslims.  The actual differences are no more profound to me than the differences between Protestant and Catholics, but the history of the conflict between these groups fuels much of the overall militancy of the region.  The professor made the point that the Sunnis of the world are no more eager for Shiite-controlled Iran to get atomic weapons than the West is.  They fear that they are as likely a target for Iranian aggression as Tel Aviv or Paris.  Today we talked about the Libyan conflict, trying to make sense of the forces at play, and debated a bit how much effect, if any, new web technology has on these revolutions, comparing to the Iranian revolution of 1979.  I'm probably going to steer my paper in my Globalization class to a topic dealing with some of this material to take advantage.


Anyway, life is good.  I blew out my knee (again) playing soccer (again) this weekend.  But I was on the couch all weekend so I actually did some homework.  I'm limping around this town but maybe I can use this socialized medicine thing to my advantage.