ird’s Eye: We start with Amy Goodman’s interview with Juan Cole, available as a ten minute video, with written excerpts below. As always, Cole is knowledgable and insightful, arguing that the revolution is secular and populist, and exploring how that shapes reactions from other countries. That populism means (to many in power) that it has to stop, and Helena Cobban looks at how that is happening. And finally we link both to Big Picture’s excellent collection of photos, and Lucas Dolega’s final assignment: he was killed shortly after this picture was taken.

* “Spearheaded by Labor Movements, by Internet Activists, by Rural Workers; It’s a Populist Revolution” Juan Cole

One thing to keep in mind is that Tunisia is not an oil state. And it suffered from a kind of nepotism that was extreme. I mean, the U.S. leaked cables from WikiLeaks suggest that 50 percent of the economic elite of that country was related in one way or another to the president or to the first lady, Leila Ben Ali, and her Trabelsi clan. So, the combination of not having any extra resources to bribe people and buy them off and also of monopolizing the country’s economic resources in the hands of a few relatives was unique to Tunisia.

* ‘Delugist’ narrative on Tunisia Helena Cobban

There is a powerful constellation of forces in the Middle East that wants to see Tunisia’s current popular uprising fail. This constellation includes: (1) All the other U.S.-supported autocrats in the Arab world, now terrified that Pres. Ben Ali’s hasty departure from the country his family has looted for so long may foretell their own; (2) The U.S. securocracy, which for years now has relied heavily on inserting military “advisers”, “trainers”, etc into the highest levels of all these autocracies to help it pursue some of the most repressive portions of the so-called “Global War on Terror”; and (3) The Israeli establishment, which sees the rule of autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, etc as essential to the continued repression of pro-Palestinian activities in and by these countries.

How could the various portions of the region’s anti-democratic constellation respond? Mainly, they rushed to invoke (and also, perhaps, to help activate) an “Apres lui le deluge” kind of narrative designed to warn the citizens of other Arab countries that: (1) The downfall/departure of Ben Ali would lead only to chaos, instability, and social strife inside Tunisia, and (2) Therefore, the regimes of all the other US-supported countries where a Tunisian-style mass uprising might threaten should immediately be strengthened in their capacities to withstand any repeat of a similar uprising– including by being able to “point” to the Tunisian example as one of strife and chaos, rather than democracy and enhanced national unity, emerging from an autocrat’s overthrow.

* An uprising in Tunisia The Big Picture

* Eyewitness: Final assignment

Demonstrators outside the Tunisian interior ministry, photographed by Lucas Dolega of EPA. Dolega, 32, was hit by a teargas grenade in the protests and died of his injuries yesterday