The mood of the Arab public shifts easily, and beliefs such as that China sells inferior merchandise to Arab countries, or is stealing Middle Eastern oil, have greatly affected the way local people think about China.

It’s not a freedom fighter atop a tank but a young bohemian woman in Benghazi reviving a carnival banned by Gaddafi and singing songs of protest. Ann Marlowe reports on an extraordinary utopian moment in the free city.

Britain said Tuesday it will send about a dozen senior soldiers to Libya to help organize the country's haphazard rebel forces, as international allies seek to aid the opposition's attempts to break the military stalemate.

Journalist Atem, who wants to keep her identity obscure, writes of Libyan life without Moammar Gadhafi. Atem is 17 years old. Before the uprising began, she was finishing her last year in high school and acting very much her age.

The Arab Spring is in its third month, and some already express concern about its next phase. In Tunisia things are moving too slowly. In Egypt, the moment of the revolution has been replaced by the routines of national politics, and the revolutionaries are frustrated.

In recent times, the Russians, the Americans and West Europeans have found that the constant interplay of timeless social structures and a readiness to sacrifice life and property in what often becomes a religious struggle produces totally unforeseen crises.

No sooner did Libya's ragtag army of anti-Gadhafi insurgents retreat along the Mediterranean coast toward Benghazi than France's SSP 1 chartered a Falcon executive jet to meet with dissident leaders.

Foreign military interventions seldom run a smooth course; they have been particularly messy, if not counterproductive, in the vast swathe of lands stretching from the Maghreb to Indonesia.