Reply #42: Dear Tripoli propagandists: Nothing compares 2 U and your surreal claims [View All]

Dear Tripoli propagandists: Nothing compares 2 U and your surreal claims
Harriet Sherwood
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 May 2011 15.19 BST

"It's been seven hours and 15 days," sings Sinead O'Connor in Nothing Compares 2 U, a ballad that will instantly transport me back to the lobby of the Rixos hotel in Tripoli.

In my case it was 16 hours and 27 days that I listened over and over to Sinead, Kool and the Gang, Chris de Burgh, Spandau Ballet and countless other 80s artists on an endless loop echoing around the vast ostentatious lobby, whose drooping glass centrepiece was memorably described by a well-known British broadcaster as "the used condom chandelier".

But the muzak and the decor were relatively benign backdrops to four weeks of exposure to the Libyan regime and the parallel universe it inhabits.

By the end, I was so accustomed to the black-is-white statements of officials that the dropped jaws of newcomers at declarations such as "there is no bombardment of Misrata" seemed naively comical.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/06/libya-war-correspondents-fed-propaganda