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ce traitement n’a pas été homogène, Libération n’ayant pas informé comme Le Figaro, ou Le Monde comme Le Point, et qu’il a par ailleurs évolué au fil des jours sous la pression du mouvement populaire.

The security forces at first allowed the demonstrations to build for a few hours. Then military forces fired shots into the air, followed by occasional blasts from a water cannon to disperse the crowd. After the former government’s swift and ruthless attacks on any unauthorized public gathering, however, the crowd seemed to revel in the relatively gentle response. “A shower,” shrugged one man, in French, his suit and overcoat soaking wet. A man in red shoes danced in the puddles in front of the chanting crowd.

The outlawed Communist and Islamist parties were excluded from the talks.

what is fascism? It is a real ideology, not just an epithet. It is characterized by belligerent nationalism, militarism, aggressive war, suppression of civil liberties, use of religion in the service of the state, exaltation of the executive, opposition to free markets domestically and internationally, corporatism, welfarism, domestic spying, torture, and detestation of the Other, in this case Muslims and Arabs.

It's the same old problem for us in the West. We mouth the word "democracy" and we are all for fair elections – providing the Arabs vote for whom we want them to vote for.

For years, this wretched man had been talking about a "slow liberalising" of his country. But all dictators know they are in greatest danger when they start freeing their entrapped countrymen from their chains.

The torture chambers will keep going. We will maintain our good relations with the dictators. We will continue to arm their armies and tell them to seek peace with Israel. And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The search is now on for a more pliable dictator in Tunisia – a "benevolent strongman" as the news agencies like to call these ghastly men. And the shooting will go on – as it did yesterday in Tunisia – until "stability" has been restored. No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab dictators is over. We will see to that.