The allegory miner strikes far too rich a vein even for irony in Mali, where the (illegal) French intervention to prop up an anti-democratic regime installed by coup d’etat has produced a revolutionary atmosphere under whose weight even Marat or Robespierre would shrink. I am referring, of course, to the ultimate, but no doubt culinarily satisfying, demise of the camel presented to French President François Hollande in honor of his bloody invasion of Mali to, for geopolitical reasons echoed by an earlier French-led intervention in Libya, annihilate a revolt by nomadic tribes against the centralizing and authoritarian Bamako government. Said … Continue reading In Mali, The Revolution Consumes Its Own — Literally