re: #22 Charles

Wikileaks is already trying to claim credit for this, even though the protests have to do with the economy and food shortages, and have been going on for quite a while. Some Wikileaks cables showed the corruption of the Ben Ali government, and may have contributed slightly to the unrest, but that would be a very minor contribution compared to, say, famine.

Theodore Dalrymple had an essay on Tunisia back when it was “just” riots. His diagnosis was that when State corruption had got to the point where a guy with a master’s in computer science was reduced to trying to sell vegetables for a living, then forbidden to sell them for lack of a license (grease palms please), and spat upon by police when he complained, and when the man set himself on fire and died in the blaze because there was nothing left him but that… that’s toxic government. A lot of people saw themselves in that young man’s fate.

The riots were shown on TV today. There is no famine, not in the sense that people are dropping dead in the streets like Leningrad during the Nazi siege. What there is is the energy of despair. The vise of corruption has squeezed the people too tight, and they can see famine coming if they can’t get out of that vise.

Today Tunisia, tomorrow, Algeria and Libya? Egypt? Who knows where this is going?