Marc:

I continue to monitor the Rage events with a focus on something different.

We tend to focus not on promoting democracy but on establishing or maintaining nation-state power structures.

The debate in the Arab world, in my opinion, has, over the last 90 years or so, focused on who gets to control the apparatus of a strong central government descending from the ancient Persian/Greece/Roman empire models, which place sub-national governance/government in a very inferior position easily controlled from above.

What is fascinating to me about Libya is that, unlike the perennial battle over who gets to be in charge (ultimately creating one form of dictatorship over the previous), is that, with no pre-existing pattern, people are beginning to form, admittedly on an experimental and informal basis) sub-national governance structures.

The question they raise, which is markedly different from other countries, is not "who?," but "how?," which, I believe is the first crack in a wall that has, for the most part, held Arab peoples back, and diverted their attention from the issues needed to be addressed in more sophisticated and urbanized systems like they once had in Babylon, etc...

While the results are unpredicatable, in my view, the challenges raised and faced in Libya (free from distortion of anti-imperialism and poverty of resources) are fundamental ones: How do we, as a modern, young Arab society wish to govern ourselves to provide essential services and opportunities?

The Arab World's future may be re-shaped by these nascent Libyan experiments, which, hopefully will impact all the old, unworkable and externally-derived nation-state systems.

Notably, in a world of Nation-States, the shell and trappings are needed, but how can sub-national governance open opportunities (maybe not immediately) for Arab self-determination and civic advancement?

I heard a lady on CNN talking from Benghazi about what she wanted--- greater services, education, opportunities, freedom---voting rights, while perhaps significant vehicles to those ends, where not a front-runner.