Political and technological changes have a history of going hand in hand. Technology empowers individuals to overcome their isolation and connect to share ideas, information, hopes, and dreams. The most recent phenomenon in this long history (which dates back at least as far as the Gutenberg printing press) is the …
Last weekend, Bahrain held special elections to fill 18 parliamentary seats left vacant after members of the Islamist al Wefaq party resigned last February amid anti-government protests. Despite the government’s attempts to fill the seats without incident, Bahrain’s opposition seized the opportunity to revive anti-government protests, which the government had …
Next month, Tunisians will go to the polls for the first time since former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country last January. Voters will determine the members of the National Constituent Assembly, which will be tasked with re-writing the constitution and determining the selection process of the …
The search for Muammar Qadhafi has intensified after Libyan rebels seized most of Tripoli. The initial focus was on Qadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound and nearby apartment blocks in a neighborhood that contains many Qadhafi loyalists. Today, the chairman of the rebel Transitional National Council, Mustafa Abul Jalil, stated that the …
As governments in the Middle East struggle to come to grips with the surging demands for freedom of expression among their populations, media across the spectrum are coming under attack. Repressive regimes do not discriminate between old media and new. Sometimes the threat does not originate from a government but …
Rebel forces reportedly took control of Muammar Qadhafi’s fortified Bab al-Aziziya command base in Tripoli today as they further consolidated control of the capital. Confusion reigned amid reports that Qadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam, whom the opposition Transitional National Council had claimed to detain, apparently roamed free inside Tripoli rallying support …
A string of coordinated cross-border terrorist attacks against Israelis launched from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and Gaza yesterday underscored one of the ominous side effects of the “Arab Spring”: Egypt’s state security institutions have lost control over the Sinai region and are fighting a losing battle against Islamist terrorist groups and …
The Obama Administration, which has been tragically slow to condemn President Bashar al-Assad’s violent repression of peaceful demonstrators and call for his resignation, finally took action to do so yesterday. After muting its criticism of Assad’s serial mass murders of his own people for five months, the White House released …
Monday’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus—by a mob orchestrated by the Syrian government—underscores the abject failure of the Obama Administration’s strategy of engaging the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime. The Administration naively sought to upgrade diplomatic contacts with the Syrian dictatorship after abandoning the Bush Administration’s policy of mobilizing …
Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Syrian cities on Friday to call for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in one of the largest outpourings of opposition since protests began over three months ago. At least 12 protesters were killed by Assad’s internal security forces. More …
