Tunisian Rebels Get What They Want...

...again!

Tunisian PM names independents to key gov't posts

"Tunisia's prime minister appointed independents to three key posts in the country's new interim Cabinet on Thursday, removing ministers from the former ruling party in a major concession to demonstrators."

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"The new interim Cabinet, Tunisia's second in 10 days, is a caretaker government intended to prepare for elections in six to seven months. Ghannouchi said the elections will be organized by an independent national commission and overseen by international observers to ensure the vote is "honest and transparent." He did not offer a date for the ballot."

Things are moving right along. So far, it looks like the Tunisian revolution could very well be a success. These election plans sound very much like the process used in Iraq. I'm not sure if Tunisians on the streets were inspired by what happened in Iraq, but there is certainly a case to be made that the experience in Iraq, or some aspects of it, at least, have provided a template. Now, if all those other places where throngs are on the streets are equally successful we will see the Middle East become a very different place by this time next year.

And who knows what the next decade will bring? Perhaps, twenty years from now, as with Eastern Europe, the young folk in the region will have no memory of their own of the repressive regimes that held power for half a century. I've always measured the beginning of that era by the overthrow of Egypt's King Farouk, and the British, in 1952, an event that inspired so many coups that followed, and that also ushered in the long era of dictatorship, military and otherwise, that are just now being rattled to the core. Makes me feel like an old fart to be able to say I lived long enough to observe it all.

And since so many on the streets seem to be carrying loaves of French bread, maybe it should be called the French Bread Revolution.   I seem to recall the French Revolution having something to do with bread, too, or was it cake?  Bread and roses jasmine.  And in case you're wondering why it's been called the jasmine revolution, I suppose it's named after the sweetest smelling flowering shrub in the Middle East.  Take a look.  That's why we gave our daughter that name, too. But I'm rambling. Like an old fart.