Word: libya
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...twelve years as Libya's master, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has earned a special place on the world stage: that of the quintessential troublemaker. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has described him as "a mental case" and "a lunatic." African neighbors fear his expansionist ambitions. The U.S. considers him an international outlaw and has accused him of meddling in no fewer than 45 nations. When Authors Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre were looking for a villain to cast as the mastermind of a plot to hold New York City up for nuclear blackmail in their novel The Fifth Horseman, they naturally...
...descendants of Italian colonials, nationalized foreign banks and decreed that all signs and documents be written in Arabic. A devout Muslim, he banned liquor imports and imposed the Sharia (Islamic law), which can, for example, punish a thief by amputation of a hand. In 1970 Gaddafi's Libya became the first Arab oil-exporting country to demand substantially higher prices for crude. Around the same time, Gaddafi struck a deal with the Soviet Union, exchanging oil for what would become an arsenal of highly sophisticated weaponry...
From the beginning, Gaddafi's aspirations were not limited to Libya. Hoping to succeed Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser as the charismatic leader of the Arab world, Gaddafi tried to engineer mergers first with Egypt, then the Sudan, Tunisia and finally Syria. He bankrolled Palestinian commando groups, including the extremists of Black September, and at one time made his country a refuge for international air hijackers. By pouring petrodollars into poor sub-Saharan Africa, he persuaded a number of African nations to sever their ties to Israel. At the same time, he proffered arms and money to "liberation...
...across as cool, self-disciplined, shrewd," reports TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, who has interviewed the Libyan leader twice. "He radiates authority, confidence and self-control." Little is known about Gaddafi's private life except that he lives austerely, sometimes spending days meditating alone in the desert. In Libya,. Gaddafi's eclectic revolutionary ideology, which he calls the "Third International Theory," is summed up in his three-volume Green Book. He describes his theory as "an alternative to capitalist materialism and Communist atheism." Gaddafi has transformed Libya into a Jamahiriya (State of the Masses), a system of "direct...
...ministers' multiplying troubles came as the direct consequence of the organization's past excesses. By not curbing the price-gouging tactics of hard-liners such as Nigeria, Libya and Algeria, OPEC has pushed up the cost of crude by almost 90% in the past two years, to an average price in excess of $34 per bbl. That rise has fanned inflation and cut economic growth around the world. More important, it has led businesses and individuals to reduce consumption and start looking to such alternative energy sources as coal, natural gas and solar power...