Actually, the riot is not really in Arabia; perhaps a better word would be Arabiana. The riot that started in Tunisia against a long standing dictatorship has now spread to many other countries. Southern Sudan has been liberated from the sway of the North, and Hosni Mobarak, a name that was almost as staunchly eternal as the famed pyramids of Egypt, is now dust; almost so. There was a time when no one thought that Mobarak would ever live the throne of Egypt, or ever die, for that matter. The man had held the power in Egypt for well nigh thirty long years now, which is like eternity in modern politics. However, the rapidly spreading Arab riot has now finally engulfed him, and although his old friends the US, Britain and Germany are trying to negotiate a deal to save him, it seems like this time he has got to go. So thinks Mohammad ElBaradei, Nobel Laureate and Egyptian diplomat.

The world of politics makes for strange bedfellows. America, the befuddled land of rigorous democracy, has always found it neither ironic nor hard to support dictators the world over. In fact, Americans have actually found it hard to deal with Third world democracies. People like Hosni Mobarak and Saddam Hussein were good to them; they were more or less westernized dictators who talked the talk and walked the walk American politicians are used to – give me money, and I will sell you my country in a tray. They were never comfortable with democracies, ragtag idealogues asking for their rights. Rights are good in America, among the WASP community; rights are terrorist demands in other countries, especially those with oil under the soil.

Anyway, one more land of dictatorship is finally seeing some change. There will be blood, and there will be death, but once that rubble goes away, probably some good phoenix will emerge out of the fire and the chaos.