Caravan crosses into Niger

[greenilex]

Dare we hope that Murdoch and family, Blair and family and Quhaddaffy and family are all lost in the desert together?

[Al R Gando]

Dare we hope that Murdoch and family, Blair and family and Quhaddaffy and family are all lost in the desert together?

We have got them on the list,
And they'd none of them be missed,
No, they'd none of them be missed!

Especially if Blair took his faithful passepartout D Miliband with him :) Blair would probably like Burkina Faso - a model of democracy and fairness.

[greenilex]

Maybe Rupe is getting thirsty and fancied a Saif Cherie....

[Mr Pee]

I hate caravans. Clogging up the roads every bank holiday. Send 'em all off to the desert. At least they won't be in anyone's way for a change - and as a bonus, NATO can use them for target practice.

[BBMmk2]

I hate caravans. Clogging up the roads every bank holiday. Send 'em all off to the desert. At least they won't be in anyone's way for a change - and as a bonus, NATO can use them for target practice.

Nice

[ahinton]

I hate caravans. Clogging up the roads every bank holiday. Send 'em all off to the desert. At least they won't be in anyone's way for a change - and as a bonus, NATO can use them for target practice.

I'm less than fond of them myself, though I'd not especially care to have to pay even more tax in order to fund the mass exodus of all British ones from their current locations to wherever in the Sahara you might like them to be, still less the immense additional cost of damages if NATO actually did to them as you recommend here. Anyway, who's to say that one or more of them might not then get hijacked in order to transport a certain Colonel out of the country of which he still seems not quite to have gotten around to accepting that he's no longer in charge?...

[Richard Tarleton]

Thinking of Libya's southern borders, just reminding myself of the part played by Gaddafi in the story of Tinariwen....

In 1980, Libyan ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi put out a decree inviting all young Tuareg men who were living illegally in Libya to receive full military training. Gaddafi dreamed of forming a Saharan regiment, made up of the best young Tuareg fighters, to further his territorial ambitions in Chad, Niger, and elsewhere. Ag Alhabib and his bandmates answered the call and received nine months of training. They answered a similar call in 1985, this time by leaders of the Tuareg rebel movement in Libya, and met fellow musicians Keddou Ag Ossade, Mohammed Ag Itlale (aka "Japonais"), Sweiloum, Abouhadid, and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni. All sang and played guitar in various permutations. The musicians joined together in a collective (now known as Tinariwen) in order to create songs about the issues facing the Tuareg people, built a makeshift studio, and vowed to record music for free for anyone who supplied a blank cassette tape. The resulting homemade cassettes were traded widely throughout the Sahara region.

In 1989, the collective left Libya and moved to Ag Alhabib's home country of Mali, where he returned to his home village of Tessalit for the first time in 26 years. In 1990 the Tuareg people of Mali revolted against the government...

They've just released another album.