It is necessary that we remind Tulsans that NON VIOLENT actions brought down the dictatoers on Eqypt and Tunsia.Maybe Wiconsin is next..
Tomgram: Andy Kroll, The Spirit of Egypt in Madison Right now, at the invaluable
Antiwar.com website -- overflowing with blazing headlines -- you can see two worlds of trouble awkwardly intertwined. The first is a
Middle East newly afire, one in which Muammar Qaddafi’s rotting, mad regime
is shrinking to the size of
Libya’s capital,
Tripoli, while the rest of the region continues to
light up with protest. In
Iraq, tens of thousands of demonstrators
ignored government warnings and curfews to attend a nationwide “day of rage” for a better life, “storming provincial government offices in several cities” and forcing government officials to resign, even as they faced tear gas, batons, and in some cases real bullets.
Elsewhere nervous rulers were moving to placate their restless, angry populations, including 87-year-old Saudi King Abdullah, a sclerotic, American-backed autocrat who just announced a massive
$36 billion package of benefits (think: bribe) aimed at his own people, lest they,
too, get out of hand. Nonetheless, as an Antiwar.com headline tells us, the King -- according to a
New York Times report, so
“popular” as to be almost invulnerable to “democracy movements” -- now faces
Facebook threats of the first “day of rage” in his kingdom. The U.S. is
still betting that its
Persian Gulf autocrats and oil sheiks will emerge as winners, but hold onto your hats. In a crunch, the Saudi king’s popularity may prove all-too-Mubarakian, meaning that
Washington would again find itself on the wrong side of history.