An opinion piece by Elizabeth Pickworth, a journalist from Australia with a postgraduate degree in International Security majoring in Counterterrorism. She is currently based in the Gulf and undertaking research for her PhD. It questions the support for Gaddafi's regime by people who live outside of Libya and the role played by social networking sites in this support.

An excerpt:

"This leads me to question, how can people who have never lived in exile or fear from such a brutal regime support such a monstrous dictator?

To support Gaddafi's regime without ever thoroughly researching the history, his human rights violations and the plight of the Libyan people, is to entirely discredit every single Libyan of their history and struggle.

The people of Libya have risen up and controlled their own destiny, not relied on a dictator to determine their fate. For this they should be commended. Their struggle for freedom has been a bloody battle but now they can claim back their home.

I question if social networking sites were around during the Rwandan and Bosnian genocide or the time of Maoist China, would the narrative be any different and would so many members of the online community still blindly follow such a brutal dictatorship?"

http://english.libya.tv/?p=11257