As violence grows in Libya, an urban myth -- one that has been passed around diplomatic circles for the last half decade -- has been effectively shattered: that Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, is the moderate, Western, reform-oriented heir that London, Paris, and Washington have been waiting for. 

By now, you'll have seen Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, the second oldest son of the Libyan leader,  on air defending the brutal decades-long rule of his father. In a speech that had echoes of his dad's long and rambling incoherence, Saif blaimed the ongoing protests on everyone from criminals to Islamists. He promised that Qaddafi would fight to the last protestor. And he was unapologetic about a death toll that he seems to have massively under-stated; he claimed that just 14 have died, while Human Rights Watch puts the number at over 200. For those who have long lauded Saif, and secretly hoped that he would succeed his father, this speech was a wake up call.  

It's worth a brief look back to remember just how Saif built this image to begin with. It helped get the ball rolling that the young Qaddafi, a PhD graduate of the London School of Economics, looked and acted more in touch with modernity than his eccentric father. He dresses in suits and fits into Western diplomatic circles. But the rumor officially became myth several years back, when Saif won credit for convincing his father to publically renounce weapons of mass destruction and to compensate the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, which Qaddafi funded years ago. Suddenly seen as a progressive interlocateur, Saif became the point person with Western governments -- a position he retains to this day; when the British foreign minster lodged a complaint against the Libyan government's treatment of protestors yesterday, it was Saif they called. 

But it's been through the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation that Saif has really made his name.  The non-profit, incorporated in Switzerland, put forward a more progressive image of Libya in which Islamists were compassionately re-integrated into daily life and poverty was combatted with every tool available. Journalists visited jihadi re-integration sites and praised what they saw.

Today we're seeing a rather different picture of Libya. From what reports are leaking through -- there is no foreign media allowed in Libya -- government forces are hoping to exorcize the country of protestors, with air strikes, live rounds, and allegedly foreign mercenaries if that's what it takes. 

So here's the biggest test: If Saif is telling the truth and the protestors really are delinquents -- and the security forces so disciplined -- why not let the international press in? That's the only chance left for this prince to manage his image. Even then, the myth of a moderate heir can't be saved.

It took a little under a month for Tunisians -- with a vital assist from their military -- to oust Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak went from pillar of stability to disgraced ex-president in just 18 days.

Now, as we enter a seventh day of protests and armed street battles raging across Libya, the unimaginable fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi suddenly seems very imaginable indeed.

So far, ant-government demonstrators have more or less taken over major cities in eastern Libya, including Benghazi, the country's second-largest. The uprising has been bloody: Human Rights Watch reports that as many as 233 people have died, and probably more.

Last night, events seemed to reach a tipping point, as representatives of several large tribes voiced their support for the rebels and several diplomats -- including Libya's envoy to the Arab League and its No. 2 man in China -- resigned in protest.

Then, as protesters reportedly thronged Tripoli's Green Square and marched on Qaddafi's compound, Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of the ruler, appeared on state television, dressed in a black suit and tie and slouching in front of a green map of Africa.

In a bizarre, apparently off-the-cuff speech, Seif accused the protesters of receiving foreign help and seeking to set up "Islamic emirates" in eastern Libya -- that is, when they weren't doing LSD and working with African mercenaries. Warning of a "civil war" in the making, he vowed to fight "until the last man, until the last woman, until the last bullet."

Many things still aren't clear in Libya, where rumors are flying fast and furious and foreign journalists aren't able to operate. Last night, there was a rumor going around Twitter that Qaddafi had fled to Venezuela; Caracas denied it. Another story had it that Seif had been shot by his brother Mutassim, who as the national security advisor theoretically controls large parts of the security apparatus.

Seif's speech was certainly crazy, but he may be right about one thing: There is a nasty internecine conflict on the way in Libya. From all that we've seen, the regime will do anything to stay in power, including shooting people in cold blood with heavy-caliber weapons. It doesn't look like there will be a nice, friendly "let's all hold hands and clean up Tahrir Square" moment. After four decades of unspeakable tyranny, Libyans will be out for vengeance.

For those interested in following events in Libya on Twitter, I've made a list of key sources to follow. Please bear in mind, however, that much of what goes around in hearsay and unconfirmed rumor -- much of it no doubt wrong. Unfortunately, it's the best information we have to go on right now. I'll keep adding good feeds to the list as I find them, and feel free to recommend your own.

Journalists watch on February 18, 2011 a mock walk on Mars of volunteers of the Mars500 experiment, Van Yue of China and Alexander Smoleyevsky of Russia, at the Korolev Space Mission Control Center outside Moscow. Two members of a group of volunteers isolated from the outside world for eight months stepped out on a mock-up of Mars, half-way through their experiment to study the effects of a Red Planet mission. The men's first steps were relayed to the Russian control center that monitors real space missions, as part of an experiment organized by the European Space Agency and Moscow's institute of biomedical problems.

Call it a story that's truer than fiction. The arrival of nearly 5,000 Tunisian refugees to the island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily, speaks to the economic hardships that persist in Tunisia despite the fall of Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali  -- but also contains a parallel to one of the 20th century's seminal works of literature on the politics of revolution.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a descendant of the Italian nobility that used to govern the island, was the author of "The Leopard," an account of the 19th century unification of Italy, known as the Risorgimento. The story is told from the perspective of a fictional Sicilian prince who, over the course of the novel, watches his authority slowly crumbles.

It is a story that the modern-day revolutionaries in North Africa, not far from Lampedusa, would do well to read. The prince offers an often bitter account of the deterioration of the old order's legitimacy, which opened the door to the current unrest. 

"He knew the King well, or rather the one who had just died; the present one was only a seminarian dressed up as a General," the prince ruminated. "And the old King had really not been worth much."

But "The Leopard" should also serve as a warning to the protesters. The prince's nephew, Tancredi, emerges as a figure more closely tied to the prince than the incipient revolution. "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change," he tells his uncle, when justifying his decision to join the rebels. He reasons that only by joining the revolutionaries will his class be able to maintain its position in the new order.

And in the end, the Risorgimento sweeps through Sicily, but the island remains fundamentally unchanged. The prince, near the end of the novel, tries to explain this mentality to a representative of the new Italy. "This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and these monuments, even, of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing around like lovely mute ghosts," he says. "[A]ll these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of the mind."

As the press rushes off to cover the bloodshed in Bahrain and Libya, it's worth keeping in mind that the prime minister in Tunis was still appointed by Ben Ali and that, this July, the Egyptian military will likely celebrate its 59th year holding the reins of the Egyptian state. This isn't a revolution just yet.

Revolutionaries in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, have taken over a radio station and are broadcasting their message on the Internet. Benghazi has long been a center of dissent against the rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi, who has ruled Libya with a mercurial iron fist for more than four decades.

While it's hard to know what's going on in Libya given the difficulties in reporting there -- the country has no independent press to speak of, basically zero civil society, and is not at all welcoming to foreign journalists -- Libyan exiles have been working hard to get the word out.

The radio commentary itself is gripping, with breathless amateur announcers calling on the international media to cover what "the criminal Qaddafi" is doing and warning fellow Libyans about "foreign mercenaries."

"This is an Arab revolution not just a Libyan revolution. This is a Muslim revolution," I heard one announcer say.

Perhaps the best source in English is the Libya February 17 blog, which is posting videos and short dispatches sourced to Twitter. What seems clear so far is that the government's response to widespread and growing protests has been brutal, with reports of at least 24 deaths so far and likely many more. This is not going to be the kind of peaceful revolution that I witnessed in Cairo.

Another North African government faces mass protests: 

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Djibouti to call for President Ismael Omar Guelleh to step down.

The demonstrators were reportedly monitored closely by security forces in riot gear.

Mr Guelleh's family has governed the Red Sea city state since independence from France in 1977.

Like Bahrain, Djibouti is a tiny country with a major U.S. military presence. More than 2,000 U.S. troops are based at Camp Lemonier, a former French military installation. Djibouti is in a  prime spot for U.S. counterterrorism operations, bordering Somalia and just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.  

Guelleh, accused of targeting opposition leaders for arrest and shutting down critical newspapers in previous elections, was received at the White House in May and met with Vice President Joe Biden. 

Here's a dramatic video out of Libya (via the Guardian and Bill Easterly) showing a crowd in Tobruk bringing down a statue of Muammar Qaddafi's famous Green Book. 

The Green Book lays out the Colonel's governing philosophy, including his thoughts on democracy and economics and his "third universal theory," an alternative model to capitalism and communism rooted in the Quran.