Mansur's Bedouin Botany Lesson

It's nice to see someone who hasn't been fooled by the fluffy meringue re an "Arab Spring"--Salim Mansur, a man who's both a gentleman and a scholar:

No matter what season it is in Arab politics, spring or winter, there is one near certainty since time immemorial: Arab politics teeter on the fine line separating Bedouin savagery and some form of authoritarian order.

In such a world, democracy is another word for mobocracy. This is what we have been witnessing behind the hyperbole of Arab spring breaking out in jasmine and roses...

A  history professor at UWO, Mansur knows that it's really breaking out in far less appealing foliage--poison ivy and ragweed, say.