Epstein Secrets

of popular anger and frustration over the region's economic, social and political dysfunction. The same dissatisfaction that galvanized crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square also drove young Iranians to bring down the shah. And it also has aided the recruitment efforts of Bin Laden and other Islamist ter

he public space, there was now the cult of the rulers, the unbounded power of Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged. Fear

xperience, more educated and prosperous and linked to Europe than the norm. As the rebellion made its way eastward, it skipped Libya and arrived in Cairo, "the mother of the world." There, it found a stage worthy of its ambitions. Often written off as the quintessential land of political EFTA_R1_002

in Tahrir Square demanding to be rid of him. The senior commanders of the armed forces cast him aside, and he joined his fellow despot, Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had fallen a month earlier. From Cairo, the awakening became a pan-Arab affair, catching fire in Yemen and Bahrain. As a monarchy, th

upply, there is no dearth of hopeless young people, whose numbers will continue to grow in the coming years. Indeed, whatever resemblance events on Cairo's Tahrir Square bear to May 1968 in Paris and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it would be premature to proclaim that freedom has prevailed. Wh

s. The government was authoritarian but also determinedly secular and pro- Western. The cracks, however, were larger than anyone thought: President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had carefully hidden the extent to which illness had weakened his control of the government; his ties with other centers of power, such as

of popular anger and frustration over the region's economic, social and political dysfunction. The same dissatisfaction that galvanized crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square also drove young Iranians to bring down the shah. And it also has aided the recruitment efforts of Bin Laden and other Islamist ter

he public space, there was now the cult of the rulers, the unbounded power of Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged. Fear

WHEN THESE LEADERS fell, the Western media joyously proclaimed the end of an era. When the demonstrations began in late January in Tahrir Square in Cairo, exhilaration grew by the hour not only among the participants but also among the journalists who had hastened to Egypt from all parts of the globe

that in fact Hamdi had not struck him—and she was acquitted). But there was enough tension and discontent within the country—and in particular with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali— that had it not been for the unfortunate Bouazizi, some other incident might well have caused the overthrow of the regime. Next, for a rev