Qadhafi's mafia state

With all the focus on the end of the Qadhafi dictatorship in Libya, it is timely to also ask how Qadhafi managed to stay in power for 42 years, largely unchallenged. The Muftah blog has some interesting commentary on the 'mafia state' created by the Qadhafi family in which civic values were completely absent. Here is an extract:

Symptomatic of how it was run [the state] is an incident in 2009, in which
two of Qadhafi's sons fought each other with military tanks until one of
them forced the other to sell him his shares in a new Coca Cola plant in the
country.

Reflections on the Arab Spring

Rami Khouri has a light and easy summary here on events in the Middle East since the start of the Arab uprisings (how long can people refer to it as the Arab Spring? after all, it's likely to continue in one form or another for years, if not decades.).

The end of Tahrir?

Yesterday, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (#SCAF) finally lost its patience with the ongoing sit-in protest in Tahrir Square and sent in the troops to clear the remnants of the protest movement. SCAF's calculation was based on on the fact that the average Egyptian is now weary of the demonstrations and is craving a return to normal life, and the centre of the Egyptian capital reopened for business. The decision by the liberals and leftist groups on July 8th to 're-occupy' Tahrir until SCAF meets its demands appears to have backfired completely, alienating the majority of the population and forcing a backlash from the diverse Islamist trends. A battle is now underway for the ownership of the revolution.

Marc Lynch has some analysis here.