Here we are at the end of week four, meaning that we have just two weeks left in the summer. I’m personally baffled by the pace of the summer session, but so it goes.
We’ll start with a look at a slideshow of Col. Gaddafi’s fashion over the years, which will be an indirect way of reviewing some of the big historical brackets in the 42 years of his rule. The main theme that I want us to discuss in looking at the chapter “Bayou and Laila” is dystopia. Dystopia is typically a genre of fiction, and there’s a lot of room for error in using fictional genres to interpret history (and vice versa); however, the topics that Mohamed Mesrati addresses in his diary entry warrant the discussion. I’d like to talk about what you all understand to be mainstays of dystopian stories and then we’ll list instances of those mainstays in Mohamed’s diary.
And this speech that Qaddafi gave before the UN Security Council authorized military action against his regime.
We’re also going to look at “Military Intervention and Human Rights: Is Foreign Military Intervention Justified by Widespread Human Rights Abuses?” in Controversies in Globalization. I’ll help you understand Just War Principles and we’ll talk about the political realist vs. political liberalist perspectives on military intervention for human rights.
Finally, we’ll consider what has happened in Libya since the overthrow of Qaddafi.