The Lexus And The Olive Tree Ball Cap And The Browning

According to a BBC report from Sirte, the Libyan rebel who discovered Qaddafi, a kid named Mohammed al-Bibi, was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap at the time. That's him in the photo, holding up a gold-plated Browning P-35 pistol that he took from Qaddafi. (An excellent pistol, by the way; I used to have one myself, but just in plain blued steel.)

There are surely more important things to say about the end of Qaddafi, but I'm kind of struck by the weird mashup of cultural artifacts in that photo: dusty peasant militiamen, designer sunglasses, American ball caps, and a pimped-out pistol made in Belgium. There is a story about globalization and consumption somewhere in there, twisted around a political narrative about oppression and post-colonial violence.