Libya's ascetic ruler, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, is not known as a connoisseur of humor, especially when it is at his own expense. So a satirical article about him in Turin's La Stampa last month enraged him. "It seems," ran the mock-fan-magazine prose, "that he has an ulcer, it seems that he is a homosexual, that he sleeps on a mattress of tobacco leaves, that he has a harem of 48 wives in Switzerland." Libya immediately demanded that the article's coauthors be dismissed from La Stampa, one of Italy's most respected dailies.
Ordinarily, Libya would...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
