So the moment i'm typing this, a revolution is taking place in tunesia.
The regime in tunesia is one of the uglier regimes in the midle-east, if you want to share it among the midle-eastern countries. It is in opression at least as ugly as iran, but the main difference is ofcourse that it has always been a friend of the west, so for this reason you never hear anything about human rights violations there.
Nevertheless, there's chaos in the streets at this moment in time and that is ofcourse relevant for the rest of the world as it is a tell tale sign that the whole region is likely to change rapidly in the coming years.

This is actually all about us, the west and what occupies us so much, the war on terror because the whole thing that gave rise to al-qaida in the first place is in the end the fact that the governments of oil-rich nations are almost without exception terrible dictatorships supported by the west so that total-fina, BP, halliburton and shell can do cheap but very profitable busines over there.
And what's also very nice of us is that we are very consistent in how we like those regimes: We tend not to allow people from those places to seek political asylum in our countries. No, we send them straight back where they get tortured or killed.

Now our pockets are slowly becoming empty, it turns out that those people over there no longer want to be our subordinates!!!!

So that means..how long will egypt be the number one best friend in the whole world of israel? When are western oil companies gonna pay market prices for the exploration of oil fields? What is gonna happen with oil prices worldwide?

In other words:is our perfect system of corrupting the world to serve solely our interests gonna last for...let's say another ten years?

Nuts aint it? I often wonder if ill see the castle fall. People look at me like im crazy when i speak of these issues.

Oh, don't worry. You'll see it fall.
Look at how the world has changed already. We're no longer calling the shots.
In fact.....the world already hás changed, now it's just waiting for the moment awareness starts kicking in.

Tunisia shouldnt really be called a Middle Eastern country despite its Arab heritage as its clearly in North Africa.I know a few people from there but not been there myself but from what they say it has been an awful virtual dictatorship for decades even before the last 23 years of Bin Alis tenure.

If a Tunisian were to be observant of his faith without any radical pretensions such as simply praying in the mosques at dawn it would not be unusual for him to be watched and occasionally picked up by the authorities and harrassed.This is nicely in tune with the Wests outlook hence ,as Polytrip says, the lack of overt criticism by the Western powers.But the West has been fully aware of the state of things there for several years and the West has been mumbling uneasily about this, albeit quietly and amongst itself.What interests me is the deafening silence from the other Arab nations nearby such as Algeria.

The place is in flux and unless some accommodation of the peoples wishes takes place, there is definitely room for so-called Radical Islam to emerge.After all, a good number of Tunisians joined the Afghan Mujahideen against the Russians and even after that war, they were also represented in the Arab-Afghan contingent (ie Al Qaeda) in the days of the Talibans reign.

I may be wrong about this, but isnt it the case that as a former French colony, arent Tunisians allowed to migrate to France, being regarded as French Nationals 'away from home', in the same way as those from Morocco/Algeria? Maybe a French Nexian could comment on this.

No, the french don't do that anymore. Tensions in france between people from especially northern africa and 'european frenchmen' are quite big and the french authorities are doing everything to prevent more of these people to enter the country. Most people from northern africa are living in the infamous banlieus, wich is the french word for suburbs, but when the french speak of 'the suburbs' they usually mean the getto's. Because many illegal immigrants are living there as well, the french police consistantly halts people with a dark skin to search them and to check their ID.
In other words, the situation between africans and french natives is only worsening and this translates politically in a very strict immigration policy.

On the other arab nations. They are often a bit in the same mess as tunisia. Tensions in marocco and algeria are also rising.
There is a good chance fundamentalists will benefit from the current situation, because the governments may have been surpressing radicals, but at the same time, these groups also legitimised their dictatorship to the west as well as in a certain degree to the moderate people in these countries in the sense of: "We may be bad dicators, but if we're gone, look who's gonna take-over". So these groups aren't completely marginalised, like let's say civil rights groups or true democratic movements.

On the other hand, there are many secular people involved in these protests. I'm not very hopefull, i must say. But there's no way of telling what's gonna happen.

The fact that the french government has spoken now, in favor of democratic elections is also telling.
The french government knows that supporting the regime now, certainly would lead to further escalations within it's own borders as well.
They know they have to change their tone, because there are a lot of tunisians living in paris and they're not gonna sit back, relax and do nothing if the french government keeps supporting the regime.

We're now less than a month later.
Does anybody like to make a prediction on where we'll be another 20 days from now?

I think that its very hard to make a prediction about what will be happening in 20 days but I do believe that with regards to Egypt, that it will be the army that takes over when Mubarak goes.The Egyptian army have played a clever game by not turning their guns on the anti-Mubarak protesters and I wouldnt be that surprised if they open fire on the pro-Mubarak crew in order to demonstrate that they are for change.

The Egyptian army maintains very close ties to the US and Im sure they will be in constant contact to ensure that compliance with the US agenda remains but not in such an overt fashion as Mubarak does/did.

In the medium to longer term the people of Egypt would have freed themselves from Mubaraks regimes' shackles but it wont be so easy to revolt against the army.If after a period of transition democracy as we know it emerges then Islamic radical parties are not going to have a majority to start with; this might happen at some point in the future when the Egyptians see that the democratic route offers no magical answers to their woes.

Indeed we live in interesting times.

I realy hope that the peacefull revolt is going to be succesfull. If it would fail, i fear that the negative consequences will be too huge to even imagine.

I also think that the fundamentalists are not gonna be succesfull in the very near future, but only if democracy will not make an end to dire poverty, as much as many egyptians maybe expect or hope.

On the other hand i think the population in the delta-megalopolis is too cosmopolitic to realy fall for fundamentalism. The mubarak regime has tried to picture egypt as much more primitive and prone to islamic fundamentalism as it realy is. Nobody even knows the real percentage of the population that is christian for instance, but kopts say (boast maybe) that it is around 20% of the population. With such a diverse population there can never be one form of religiousness that dictates how everybody ought to live, in a democratic environment.

But the broader consequences of this all.
I mean, if this is like the arabic version of the fall of the berlin wall, then we're in for some radical changes that eventually will affect each of us. Economically, politically, culturally...

And so Mubarak has gone.Hurray?

I think that what we have seen is a fantastic case of the manipulation of the emotions of the mob.If right before the start of the protests in Egypt there had been a military coup out of the blue the people would have been a little nervous and not rejoicing in the streets.What they now have is a non-violent de facto military coup and the people are delighted.Im glad Mubaraks gone but what replaces it is unclear to me.The best yardstick will be when the state of emergency is lifted and I dont think this will happen imminently.

I suspect there will be some jockeying for power between the head honchos of the army who have alot of material interests to maintain; there will probably some purges going on, again to appeal to the emotions of the mob in order to 'cleanse' the new administration of the nefarious characters who were intimately involved with Mubarak and his apparatus.But the man who is going to be the man in charge has been intimately involved in rendition and torture of alleged terrorist suspects and this is fully in accord with the USAs wishes-for now.The USAs hand is heavily involved despite the appearance of a hands-off approach.I find it interesting how El-Baradei has been elevated to the status of'opposition leader' when we consider he has only been in the country for less than a month.He is heavily involved in a thinktank called The International Conflict Group which has other notables like Kofi Annan, George Soros and advisers such as Zbigniew Brezhinski so I doubt he will be truly independant and free to act as he should.The USA has both angles therefore nicely covered-for now and potentially when 'democracy' occurs.

I also think Mubarak will soon move to that bolt-hole for dodgy leaders of Islamic nations, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the footsteps of Ben Ali and, some years ago, Idi Amin.

The emotions of the people have been cleverly manipulated here and I wonder if they would have simply changed one oppressive regime for another.

I hope that this is the beginning of a true arabic/islamic renaisance. It's true that it's all kinda shady right now, but i don't think it would have been possible to solve this issue in any other way without more bloodshed. There realy may come more democracy, freedom of speech, etc.

All and all you can say that this is a good thing: the image of arab's worldwide as violent, fundamentalist barbarians has succesfully been reajusted, the idea that there can be no democracy anywhere in the world without some form of western military intervention preceeding it first is one step closer to being finally trashed, israel may feel less untouchable as it always thought it was and may be more willing to reach out to both it's arab population and the palestinians, influential muslim fundamentalists may become more moderate and tolerant if that allows them to gain seats in egyptian houses of parliament, as arabs may become more accustomed to having freedom of speech more critisism towards fundamentalist may be heard from arabs and eventually throughout the islamic world, you may see a movement simmilar to what the western world has seen in the 60's, towards more individual freedom and tolerance.

It will probably be a rough ride. There where backlashes in eastern europe as well after the berlin wall fell. Especially when democracy will show not to be the answer for all problems, and dire poverty will still be a factor in everyday life, a few years from now as it was in eastern europe.

I'm very happy with this. China's communist party can say all it wants about how longing for democracy and human rights is a decadent form of western imperialism, but it's the people of egypt that did this. I bet they, with so many other dictators in the world prayed every night that the tianmen massacre would repeat itself in egypt. I bet our friend hu already had a speech prepared to congratulate mubarak with the defeat of the 'western-lead terrorists'. I bet kishore mahbubani is exploding with rage and anger because he must have hoped the tianmen slauhter would have repeated itself, even more than all those dictators he defends so vigorously.

But no....longing for human rights to be respected isn't a degenerate form of western decadence that goes against islam, chinese values, russian nature, african culture or 'the will of the people' anywhere. And holding people down, dehumanising them and slaughtering all who don't agree isn't nessecary to 'maintain stability' or 'national security'.