From 9/11 to the Arab spring

By Christopher Hitchens

Three men: Mohamed Bouazizi, Abu-Abdel Monaam Hamedeh, and Ali Mehdi Zeu – a Tunisian street vendor, an Egyptian restaurateur and a Libyan husband and father. In the spring of 2011, the first of them set himself alight in the town of Sidi Bouzid, in protest at just one too many humiliations at the hands of petty officialdom. The second also took his own life as Egyptians began to rebel en masse at the stagnation and meaninglessness of Mubarak's Egypt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/09/christopher-hitchens-911-arab-spring

Egypt: Islamism Meets Realism

By Christopher Hitchens
FREE INQUIRY April/May 2011

 "I don’t think that a single newspaper or magazine article on Egypt has ever failed to mention the presence, in the wings of Egyptian politics, of the Muslim Brother hood. It’s one of those learned references that is de rigueur for every commentator and analyst. Yet it was notable, as both the Egyptian and the Tunisian regimes began to crumble in January, that the local branches and equivalents of the Brother hood seemed to be as thunderstruck as everyone else."

Read more (secularhumanism.org)