Davos, Switzerland — Young people are upending the Middle East. They have both the numbers (approximatelytwo-thirds of the Middle East is under 30) and the facility with the tools of 21st Century revolution (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) to do so.
It was young people shouting “death to the dictator” from rooftops in Iran in 2009. It was young people who chasedBen Ami out of Tunisia. It is young people who are braving tear gas and rubber bullets in Egypt. The threats keep coming, but they keep going — and the whole thing is just getting bigger and spreading wider.
Asked about the uprisings at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bill Clinton said it was a generation yearning for their place in the modern world. They want to have a say in their society, they want to shape their own destiny. This is a desire deep in the human condition.
Mohamed ElBaradei may well be the face of the opposition movement, but here in this snowy, sleepy Swiss hamlet, far away from the hot and smoky streets of Cairo, is the man who may have been the spark. READ MORE
