The Arab Winter
Protesters keep coming to Tahrir Square. The scenes, thousands of people chanting, camping up, are now part of our daily lives. The silent Egypt, oppressed and tortured by Hosni Mubarak and his thugs, is as much a history now as the Pharaoh's one. As no futurist would have crystal-gazed the scenes of a tragicomic Muammar Qaddafi, with a tattered silk robe and wielding a golden gun, being lynched by a mob, they would not have envisioned the whole Arab world enthralled by a permanent state of revolution, which seems so self-evident and self-propelling now. In a sense, twitter revolution is over. We are now in serious territory. Freedom is no longer a word in political spin, but a real aspiration. Obama recognizes that his rhetoric is catching up with him, the monster he wanted to selectively peek into has now been unleashed on the streets. This is no longer a right-wing American politician's mid-afternoon fantasy, but real blood and sweat revolution. And, if it goes on, it has ...