Word: westerner
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...companies, including U.S. majors like Chevron and ExxonMobil, and European giants such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell, arrived to tap Libya's vast oil reserves, betting that the country would become an energy powerhouse. Construction crews now bang and clatter across Tripoli, building apartment and office towers, Western hotels (InterContinental, Starwood and Marriott are all working on new hotels) and a new airport...
...Aged just 68, Gaddafi Senior is now the world's longest-serving head of government (a few monarchs beat him when it comes to longest-serving head of state). His face peers from billboards across the country, and his firebrand style has barely tempered with age. His blast against Western leaders in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last September could have been written years ago. The first sign visitors see at Tripoli airport is not an advertisement for Libya's spectacular beaches or Roman ruins, but a quote from Gaddafi's revolutionary manifesto, the Green Book, proclaiming workers...
...Western companies arrive with billions of dollars to spend, though, Gaddafi's exhortations are beginning to sound like the language of a vanishing culture. Who will take his place? What will take his system's place? Those questions are at the core of the political debate, and as yet, there are no clear answers. "We are reckoning within ourselves," says Youssef Sawani, a close associate of Saif and executive director of the influential Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. "The world has changed around Libya, and Libya has to change. Change is long overdue...
...over Scotland - an attack which killed 270 people - al-Megrahi returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli last August with Saif by his side. The move cemented Saif's standing among millions of ordinary Libyans. "After that, Saif could no longer be accused of being infected with Western values," says Noman Benotman, a former leader in the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, who fought alongside al-Qaeda in Afghanistan until 2000. Benotman is a lot less famous than al-Megrahi, but his collaboration with Saif may actually be the clearest sign that Gaddafi Junior is serious about...
...handing out visas to most European citizens. When I visited Libya's biggest gas-export facility in February, the Italian manager was stuck in Rome, with no visa to return to work. To all this, Saif sighs, clearly exasperated. "There is a big gap between ... our mentality and the Western mentality," he says. "I think we are not ready to deal in the right way with the Western world...