Fifteen years ago this month, a mass movement in Tunisia overthrew the 24-year reign of U.S.-backed despot Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He also told me that his earliest memory was of the mass protests against the attempt to lower the bread subsidy in the early 1980s. In less than a month, the quarter-century reign of a “near perfect” strategic partner of United States imperialism fell, fleeing the country in disgrace. A dam was broken that had remained solid for decades, not just in Tunisia but also across the Middle East and North Africa. New police states are entrenched in Egypt and Tunisia.