Thursday’s death of Col. Moammar Gadhafi represents different things to different people — long-awaited liberation, further evidence of American meddling on the world stage, or a powerful sign that the upheaval collectively known as the Arab Spring isn’t over yet. That last option is explored further in this CNN article about the major changes that already have happened in that part of the world and what may still be in store for certain of Libya’s neighbors. –KA

CNN:

Moammar Gadhafi’s demise, after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, means that three rulers in power collectively for 95 years are gone. Scholar and author Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, says that 2011 “is to the Arabs what 1989 was to the communist world. The Arabs are now coming into ownership of their own history and we have to celebrate.”

Protesters in Yemen and Syria may be re-energized by the pictures from Sirte, Libya, showing the almost pathetic end of a ruler whose flowing robes and uniforms had long given him an aura of invincibility. Demonstrators in Syrian cities celebrated Gadhafi’s death and warned President Bashar al-Assad that he would be next. As one Syrian activist told CNN: “The clear fate of all who kill his people is to end up under the feet of the nation.”

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