Off the top of my head here's what's going on in Libya more or less.
BigWill nailed Gaddafi's domestic policies. This has taken Libya from the poorest to the richest country in Africa since he staged his coup. Not to mention they're armed to the teeth. Good thing too, otherwise Tripoli would probably look like Baghdad right now. Qaddafi follows in the Nassarist tradition of secular, pan-arab leaders in the region, many of whom have contended with cia/mi6/dgse/etc. meddling over the years.
Much of Qaddafi-supporting Libya had phds pouring out of it, burgeoning middle class, crazy influx of educated profesionals from all over the world coming to Tripoli in the last decade. Grew into a developing modern state as fast or faster than Iraq, which also had crazy education, middle class, development, industry, blah blah.
Qaddafi undertook the single largest engineering project in the world for several years running, creating an underground river essentially porting water into and throughout Libya with the understandign that neighboring regions are projected to go dry in the coming years. The largest steel pipes on the planet were made in Libya. Not germany, not japan, not the us, but Libya. NATO just bombed this project a couple weeks ago (war crime).
You have to remember that Libya, even the most modern parts of it, has heavy tribal influence, and much of the undeveloped and underdeveloped parts of the country are largely governed by tribal authority inside the larger Libyan governmental apparatus.
You also have to really get it through your head and always keep in mind when considering these things the general idea that successful national states cannot be allowed to exist and thrive in the modern age. The finance oligarchy that runs the world is scared shitless of autonomous governmetns providing wealth and rights to its people. Sets a good example for other countries, gives people smart ideas, gets them interested in things that threaten their full spectrum dominance on the human race. So they take down governments that show signs of promise by acting through their various regional and supernational bodies like the un, nato, world bank, imf, etc.
So some quick history, you've got Robert Gates, the recently retired sec. of def. working under carter and brzezinski during the cold war to create a cia arab legion to fuck with the soviets in that region of the world. That legion of cia stooges was and is called al qaeda, translated as 'the list' or 'teh database'. It was basically a list of militants that the cia could call upon and wave at the soviets and bait them into getting their asses beat in the mountains of afghanistan. It worked pretty well so the cia hung on to them.
Fast forward (past 9/11) to Libya now, you've got a bunch of al qaeda douches in northeast Libya - their number one recruitment region in the world - who are now being sponsored and protected by nato. they call in air strikes to nato, they're getting money, support, diplomatic recognition from uberdouches like hillary clinton and john mccain. Darna and Bengazi, both in the no fly zone and rebel strongholds, are in the top four cities of al qaeda recruitment worldwide.
There's this group of rebels, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, they have now basically declared themselves a branch of al qaeda. They're a bunch of religious bozos who say that Qaddafi is a heretic or something. They're a bunch of religious douchebags who would rather see Libya stay home to backward islamic nomads than develop into an economically viable state. They're getting cia and other intel support.
A lot of the rebels are also tribal fanatics who don't give a shit about democracy or justice but they are very racist and do want to carry out tribal vendettas. What you haven't seen much of in the news are reports of countles thousands of murders by these heroes of democracy being armed by nato. Murdering black Africans, killing kids, killing children, raping, the usual cia stuff (war crimes).
To the extent that there are legitimate people opposed to Gaddafi, they are in substantial part disgruntled people who had jobs pre-2003 before Gaddafi in the face of imperialism in iraq/afgan/pakistan/etc. and in the hopes of being skipped on the hitlist, conceded a shit ton of his national industry to the imf who of course liquidated it, increasing unemployment. There's other stuff there too including some bad blood btw gaddafi's people and rival tribes that goes back into regional history.
Then you've got NATO strafing and bombing fishing boats off the shores of Tripoli, trying to starve out the city and weaken its resolve. That's been happening for a couple months now (war crime).
China and Russia did not veto the UN Security Council resolution to attack Libya which blows. A lot of the smaller countries that went along with the attack, at least at first, would not be able to do it without the UN resolution in place because their populations actually pay attention. Putin did say after the fact that the attack reminds him of a medieval crusade. He also said that the goal of the attack is the systematic destruction of Libya's infrastructure (war crime). Hmm.
Factions in the french and italian government, mostly the leftovers from WWII era fascism, are particularly keen on subverting Libya because they had and continue to have vested interests there.
Recently there's been the assassination of the rebel leader Younis, most likely by Hifter or some other cia group. By the way the rebel leader Hifter literally is a cia agent, hung out in DC, etc. The rebellion literally is a cia coup right out in the open.
Then there's also the whole Guantanamo sheep dip cycle where nato just openly supports terrorist stooges in one theater who they were fighting against in another theater. There's a guy Hasadi who is a proud al qaeda leader who is running rebels out of Bengazi. He was killing GIs in Afganistan and then was a pow for a while, now he's good to go as a al qaeda savior of democracy in Eastern Libya. This is just one of many people like this. Basically al qaeda fighters are 'captured' and hauled out of theaters like afganistan and iraq by intelligence spooks and sent to stooge school in cia prisons, and then redeployed in places like Libya and other targets of interest. Makes for good storytelling in the press. There's been a good bit of that happening too.
There's a bunch more crazy stuff too.
Big problem with all this Libya stuff is that Qaddafi has proven to be way more popular than expected among his people, they haven't been able to kill him, the rebels have been too busy killing each other to work together and do what the cia wants, and nato states have been losing interest. And now it's exposed the the cia-sponsored 'Arab Spring' bullshit facade in plain sight for everyone to see. There are other countries on the list that are now way behind schedule. Tunisia, Egypt, then it was supposed to be Libya, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Saudi, etc. Nato's bummin right now.
Other thing to mention which is not good is that Marines and SF have been told a Libya ground invasion is a possibility. Let's hope not.
