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Maybe Ben Ali will continue urging his security forces to redouble their efforts, but cooler heads in the police and army ought to be telling him (if they are not doing so already) that there is now only one action that can quell the riots: the departure of Ben Ali himself.

without extreme vigilance on the part of the Tunisian public, the country might find itself, a few months from now, with another RCD president and a parliament still dominated by Ben Ali's party. Tunisians are going to have to remain very watchful, and keep up the pressure for change.

A year ago, BART might have gotten away with the move with less public outcry. But in the wake of the Arab Spring, any police action in the West that conjures up images of censorship in the Middle East will inevitably alarm Americans. Along with reaction to the riots in the UK, the BART incident has awoken many people to the reality that technology creates complex new means of censorship anywhere in the world.