The Colonel’s Hat

He’s also got a lot of gold there—they’re looting.  They’re not heroes.  And they’re going to destroy Libya.

hey, here’s a photo of the daughter gaddafi’s mermaid bed:

http://news.yahoo.com/rebels-looters-target-gadhafi-family-homes-215327125.html

juan cole suggests otherwise:

The secret of the uprising’s final days of success lay in a popular revolt in the working-class districts of the capital, which did most of the hard work of throwing off the rule of secret police and military cliques. It succeeded so well that when revolutionary brigades entered the city from the west, many encountered little or no resistance, and they walked right into the center of the capital.
[...]
I was moreover convinced that the generality of Libyans were attracted by the revolution and by the idea of a political opening, and that there was no great danger to national unity here.

that doesn’t sound like crippling tribal polarization.

indonesia, with their oil wealth, was predicted they wouldn’t succeed as a democracy either.

it’s disconcerting that so many people are predicting failure. the alternative condemns libyans to live under dictatorship forever.

a few months back, rebels put together an oil deal with qatar. the oil money got distributed down to residents in order to stave off families from starving, (as well as helped to fund the resistance) helping to mitigate what could have turned into a greater humanitarian crisis in the middle of a conflict. egypt as well as southern europe can’t afford for libya to devolve into a failed state. i just heard about turkey sending millions in aid as well as advisors to the rebels.

re oil grab.. i run across lefty sites where critics are obsessed with libya’s oil. it’s as if that’s the only subject that matters. they completely overlook and ignore the oppression libyans have suffered. they rail against nato yet neglect to mention it was libyans who petitioned the international community for intervention. it was libyans who called for a no-fly zone. critics rarely address a libyan perspective or include libyan voices. inherent in these kinds of arguments from critics is an attitude that they know better than libyans themselves what’s in libya’s best interest and betrays a bias that considers libyans incapable of self rule. pepe escobar complains that libya has signaled it wont deal with russia or china for oil deals. this gets presented as somehow a great outrage. where’s the outrage for how libyans have been mistreated for decades? it’s their oil. they can do anything they want with it.  of course russia and china are going to get cut out when they’ve sided with gaddafi continuing his regime. why should the rebels reward countries who’ve sided against them?

personally, i worry about graft and eventual corruption by elites in the country might deny everyday people benefit from their own resource, but i trust libyans themselves will address that themselves. yes, there is a threat that the tnc or other officials doing the bidding of the west will attempt to install neoliberal policies, but gaddafi himself was instituting neoliberal policies. that threat alone shouldn’t preclude libyans from fighting to gain independence.