The Revolutions

I've been following the recent rebellions in North Africa with quite some attention, and a mix of sadness and high respect for those who gave their life for their freedom after years of dictatorship.

The revolution is a very strong, meaningful and inspiring act, when exacerbated people can't take it no more and want change, they bring change no matter what, even at cost of their life. As the dictator on the other hand never wants to leave and tries everything to stay in power, civil war is what this comes down to.

We just saw an example with Libya, after more than 40 years in charge building a personal empire of billions of dollars, Gaddafi is (hopefully) taken away from his throne. But I'm always trying to think through these events as to why they develop this way. All those dictatorships (and the ones still existing, especially in North Africa) have been going on for decades, every government knew about them, knew about their bloody mercenary rulers and instead of doing something to change that, to try and help bring freedom to those people in need, they just kept doing business with their leaders.

Despite embargo, weapons were always traded for something in return, after all war is a great business to them. I'm not surprised also in the interest of the USA to be part of this process of redefinition of who's gonna be in charge now, there's lot of oil in that part of Africa, which is the only reason why many countries want to be there splitting the power.

I might be wrong, but I haven't seen much interest from the same all countries that repel those “illegal” governments (even if after many years) to do something in Darfur or Ivory Coast or in many other places where there's not much economical return to be had. Well, there's much more return to them if the civil war keeps going on rather than to stop.

It's always money ruling this world, and what makes me even more sad is that history tells us that those “powerful” nations that bring “freedom” want to change everything to not change anything. When the dust sets, it will be back to business as usual. The question is for how long this can going on.