Friday, January 21, 2011

Tunisia's Impact on its Neighbors

Tunisia's North African neighbors are worried. The strongmen and monarchs running Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Morocco fear that discontent may spread. Why? StrategyPage.com noted in a report issued after Ben Ali's exit that, "In most Arab countries, a group of able politicians makes deals with the wealthier families and agrees to run the place for their mutual benefit ... with the rest of the population considered ignorant peasants, to be manipulated and taxed indefinitely." With the Internet, however, the manipulated classes are no longer so ignorant. The authoritarians know they confront a social and political time bomb.

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