Nate Silver (and you, presumably) argued that the oil-rich Arab countries would be largely immune from the protest movements engulfing the Arab world. I cautioned you against that kind of reductionist thinking. How wrong could you and Silver have possibly been? (Not that you're one to ever admit his mistakes.) In less than a week's time from Silver's prediction, Ghadaffi's government is on the brink of collapse.
Interestingly enough, the American media (and the Israeli media), having focused exclusively on the political dimension of these protest movements have missed, perhaps, the most salient dimension of these uprisings, the economic motivation of the uprisings. (I had to turn to Al Jazeera to get a better analysis of the economic underpinnings of these movements.)
One of the major reasons, I think, that you see (so far) such political (ethnic and religious) unity among the protesters is that there is a common economic grievance underpinning the political revolt. (Bahrain is a separate case, because there the economic/political grievances are subsumed under the religious rivalries.)
We can expect, I believe, that the world-wide inflation in food and energy prices to have a continuing de-stabilization effect on other countries around the world. And the Western democracies may not be immune.
People on this board probably have a better appreciation of the effects of this inflation on the global economy that most others.
Bladerunner
