I have nothing of value to say about the current events in Egypt and Tunisia. Like many people in the Western Hemisphere (by which I really mean Western Europe and North America), I don't even have a clue of what it is like to live oppressed under the regime of Ben Ali and Mubarak, and so whatever I could have said, although well-meaning and well-intentioned, would be rather reductive and essentializing. Like this friend (a fellow French Socialist) comparing the Muslim Brotherhood to the Taliban. Which is a stupid comparison, because neither Tunisia nor Egypt have gone through 20 years of civil war.

Nonetheless, here are my vacuous speculations.

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt will probably unfold the way the Romanian revolution unfolded in November 1989, when the Romanians overthrew Nicolai Ceausescu, or the start of the Sixth Republic in South Korea in 1987, which ended what was essentially a military regime.

I could speak of how a frightened people started being fed up of being frightened. But from the comfort of my office chair in cushy and liberal San Francisco, this sounds awfully patronizing.

In the days the Egyptian government cut off access to the Internet, I could have given my support to the TOR project or re-tweeted or shared on Facebook such and such item as a show of support to the oppressed. Like people were changing the twitter icon or my Facebook profile picture to a green background, as people did recently in support of the Iranian people.

But this is completely inane. Revolutions do not need technology to occur. Or at least twitter or Facebook. And the last thing the Egyptians and the Tunisians need is a symbolic gesture of support that only shows how well-meaning you are.

Because we were ultimately and still are, despite all of our good intentions, complicit in their oppression in the first place.