Alexander Stuart

Gaddafi gets the boot - Public Domain Image/ article.wn.com There are two great articles in newspapers today, ruminating on the ripple effects of unrest in the Middle East and the Midwest of the USA - specifically Wisconsin - and searching not so much for a defining moment as perhaps a defining momentum. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L Friedman writes in the New York Times a column titled, This Is Just The Start , in which he examines, very astutely, connections between the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi , in protest over the confiscation of his fruit stand - which set off the Tunisian "Jasmine Revolution" - and wider contributing influences, such as "The Obama Factor" and Google Earth. Here is Friedman's quote on President Obama - whose influence on history, I have always thought (as the father of two multi-racial American children), lies hugely in the simple - and still quite remarkable - fact that he was actu