| Re: Arab Spring
Was it it ever an Arab Spring though?
I had a similar conversation to Bowler's with a cabbie in Tunisia about five years ago. I was going from Monastir to Sousse, but found the talk so engaging(and the cab fee so cheap), that I asked him to continue onto Port El Kantoui. It was a 40k or so trip and he let rip against the ruling elite, yet held a fierce pride in his country, mocked the Algerians, Libyans and Egyptians as backward and scoffed at the liberalism of the west(passionate and in good nature at the same time).
What struck me was that yes he wanted certain freedoms, but his religion was very much a mainstay of his life. The Arab Spring is an invention of the world media. We like to label things. Recently flowers tend to figure highly when we put names on revolutions. Reality is far more mundane. |