What about Libya? If a socialist state looking for definitions see descriptions and lists of socialist states. The Soviet Union, China, Poland, Cuba ... and among them a rare bird called North African Libya. Little is known about Libya and the information that we receive are always about its leader Muammar Al Gaddafi, their alleged eccentricities are only cultural differences that the Western media as if they want to sneak ravings of a madman will try to dethrone him.
Libya appears to have built, from Gaddafi came to power in 1969, a model of socialism based on Marxism, but Nasser's Arab nationalism. Long pan-Arabism key ideological base of the Libyan State, aimed to meet the union of all North African states into one project that never failed to materialize.
There is much to investigate, study and learn about the model in this country, known officially as the Republic Arab Jamahiriya at the moment but I know some peculiarities:
1. His anti-imperialist foreign policy.
2. The existence of private enterprises in coexistence with state. These latter are the backbone of its economy which is a very important factor.
3. The sales prices of oil are set by the State and not by corporations.
4. Existence of a policy for a certain equality between the sexes and economic. Libya has, according to international scales, one of the highest per capita incomes and more equal across the African continent.
5. Existence of democratic mass organizations from the base decision. It would be interesting to see how these and whether they are effective.
On the other hand we have some issues to be analyzed is that no system is perfect. We all know that good intentions and very effective that is a State, this may have errors and omissions may be misdirected or hold in your heart to corrupt officials and careerists of all kinds. This does not mean that socialism is a bad project that is necessary to fall but on the contrary, it means you have to improve from his own socialist perspective. However, the defects of a system can generate pockets of discontent at a certain critical time can be manipulated.
currently exist in Libya, as many already know, an internal conflict between government opponents Gaddafi and the Government itself. According to Western media this conflict began with a popular rebellion that emerged by infection of Egypt, Tunisia and other sites of the Arab world. This rebellion was answered by an air strike against civilians Gadhafi, an act which led to a split in the Libyan armed forces, division was the forerunner of the current civil war-ravaged country.
Well, if it were true that Qaddafi, however socialist and revolutionary that it has bombed innocent civilians regardless of their political choice, go to him my condemnation and revulsion against that specific event. But Where the images of this bombing? All the news about these bombings are the media can and have been able to transmit images of riots in major cities but after that, to discuss these bombings are based only on testimonials. This at first seems rather suspect.
this time I did a bit of historical memory and remember a very paradigmatic case, the Romanian case. Romania in 1989 was a socialist state that unlike other neighboring countries, the USSR Gorbachev's first, would not apply the measures of the project known as perestroika, which measures all know that in a few years represented a self-destruct mechanism all the socialist model in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Romania was therefore a rogue state that was opposed to being a lackey of Western capitalism as it would soon Yeltsin's Russia, Poland, etc.
Just then appeared as if by magic mountains of corpses of hundreds of opponents of the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in the city of Timisoara. The protests and discontent with the regime multiplied and revolts soon became a popular revolution supported by the army which led to the trial and execution of marriage Ceausescu on Christmas Day 1989.
The Western media for decades, praised the president referred to as openness to maintain good relations with the U.S., France, West Germany and even oppose the entry of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia in 1968 changed the role immediately. Ceausescu began to say that kidnapped babies to draw blood and inject him because he had leukemia, which required soldiers to maul mothers and babies living with their tanks pass over opponents. It was said that Bucharest was literally surrounded by camps with Arab militias ready to crush any uprising, the Securitate (Romanian Secret Service) was composed of brainwashed agents since, as infants, were kidnapped and trained.
Years passed and were discovered very strange things, in some cases very logical. The first was that, perhaps frightening fantasies of the regime were the result of errors or exaggerations. The second was that many of the bodies were dead of natural causes and that some were even taken from their graves to spread an idea. The latest data show that even the revolution was a hoax and even talk of coup plots since the army and to plan ahead by European intelligence services and Gorbachev's USSR.
Today in Libya there are two paths that go the way of continuing to live in an imperfect but probably socialism socialist, an independent and owner of his wealth or become a banana colony where democracy is monitored by multinationals such as occurs today in Romania, Iraq and many other countries prey to predators in the U.S. and the European Union.
the moment there is some information from the Libyan side: