Eye on Tunisia, Egypt

Update 11/27 11:50 PST: A theme in the newswire flow from Egypt, as well as Tunisia, is the desecration of the public image of the autocratic, and perpetual ruler. Talk about injecting reality. It’s interesting how Egypt’s youth-driven protests offer us this photo of a young demonstrator attacking this poster of Mubarak.  And who knows how many years ago the portrait was taken, Mubarak not just frozen in time here, but — as an incitement, in itself — frozen in power.

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With all the political theater in DC, I’m just now wrapping my head around the imagery from Tunisia and Egypt. This Getty photo is one of the more suggestive I’ve seen, a poignant contrast when it comes to corruption, elitism, the bubble around the despot — and the ultimate fragility of that paradise.  The caption reads:

A video grab shows a fire on Jan. 13 at a luxury resort residence said to be owned by a member of Ben Ali’s inner circle in Hammamet. A police station was destroyed in the riots along with the local headquarters of Ben Ali’s ruling party and several other villas.

(photo 1: Reuters. caption: An anti-government protester in Alexandria, 140 miles north of Cairo, defaces a picture of Mubarak. photo 2: Clotilde Gourlet/AFP/Getty Images. From the Foreign Policy slideshow, The Tunisian Moment.)