The author puts the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East in a much broader perspective of anti-Western imperialism.
...the long pent-up grievances of the Arab/Muslim world are exploding not just in the faces of local dictators such as Mubarak of Egypt or Ben Ali of Tunisia but, perhaps more importantly, against their neocolonial/imperial patrons abroad. ...This means that the uprising represents something bigger than the buzzwords of abstract, decontextualized personal freedoms, or the money-driven, carefully-scripted bogus elections -- called democracy. It represents a growing culture of resistance to neocolonialism that started with the great Iranian revolution of 1979.Hopefully, the solutions they seek will not be merely national versions of capitalism, because this is a system that inevitably devolves into imperialism, inter-capitalist rivalries, and the horrors of major wars as we witnessed in the 20th century.
In order to avoid a re-run of 20th century experience, what is now necessary is the destruction of this life-destroying social-economic system of capitalism, to be followed by a socially just and ecologically sustainable system.
Thus, the intifada must be expanded from opposition to Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians to world wide opposition to the occupation and oppression of working people by capitalists. The protests against unemployment, public spending cutbacks, anti-labor legislation that has been occurring all over Europe and now North America may be the beginning of this global intifada.
