This was title of a recent Newsweek cover story by Fouad Ajami, professor at Johns Hopkins University, celebrating the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Mideast. The article gives some brief (and interesting)historical perspective and ends with the hopeful, "now they are making and claiming their own history". I have read a fair amount concerning events of that region, mostly trying to understand a culture that produces the fanatical religious and cultural excesses that can produce people who fly planes into buildings or strap on suicide belts/vests with the express purpose of turning themselves and nearby bystanders into bloody bits of flesh and bone scattered over the landscape. Not sure it's possible to understand. Probably a volatile mix of fundamentalist religion, cultural elements, lots of young people (especially young men), with joblessness, poverty, and hopelessness clouding their future.
I wish them success. It seems that the connectedness of social media and information technology played some role in the popular uprisings. Perhaps that will help make them feel part of the global community and less susceptible to allowing autocrats or theocrats to enslave them again. In the short term we will all most likely suffer as the soaring oil prices roil the global economy. Perhaps we will slide back into recession. Perhaps we need to. Oil shocks first happened in the 70s. We've had them more than once. How many times and how much pain before we do something about our addiction to oil?
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