Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire by Chomsky Noam

Author:Chomsky, Noam [Chomsky, Noam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Published: 2013-01-08T08:00:00+00:00

There are indications that the cables WikiLeaks exposed about the dictatorship of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia had a big influence on the revolt there.

It’s questionable. The leaks showed that the U.S. government understood very well that Ben Ali was a harsh, corrupt dictator, that the population was very upset and strongly opposed to him.16 But that had no effect on support for his regime.

Do you mean support from Washington?

U.S. support. French support, primarily. France was just outlandish. After the uprising had already started, one French cabinet minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, actually went to Tunisia for a vacation.17 This is a country that’s been under the thumb of France for a long time and is surely penetrated by French intelligence. But how much these leaks influenced the protests is an open question. I doubt that Tunisians cared very much about French and U.S. hypocrisy, which is all that WikiLeaks revealed—nothing that they didn’t know themselves.

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