Geopolitical chaos procreating a chaotic leaderless world is sucking the literal life out of human hope. The tentacles of austerity measures and quantitative easing are the primary catalyst of all the madness. One way or another every government financier around the world is determined to cultivate the appearance that the good times are still rolling. The only problem is that the natural rate of failure refuses to participate in the economic facade. Fiat currencies’ purchasing power dwindles, the pounding drum beat of war beckons, and an open ended hegemonic polarity struggle for commodities ensues.

While serving as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2002, current U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave the world a glimpse into the past, present, and future all at once. In his speech, entitled “Deflation: Making Sure ‘It’ Doesn’t Happen Here,” Ben Bernanke stated:

“Although a policy of intervening to affect the exchange value of the dollar is nowhere on the horizon today, it’s worth noting that there have been times when exchange rate policy has been an effective weapon against deflation. A striking example from U.S. history is Franklin Roosevelt’s 40 percent devaluation of the dollar against gold in 1933-34, enforced by a program of gold purchases and domestic money creation.”

Today the infamous 40 percent strikes again, as Cyprus agreed to the terms of a European Union bailout in which banks will seize 40 percent of uninsured bank depositors’ wealth.

Moody’s Investors Service was quoted in Bloomberg as saying, “The seizure of larger deposits may spark tensions with Russia, the source of an estimated $31 billion in holdings in Cypriot banks.”

Proxy wars have gone beyond the spectrum of arming rogue militants and allied nations in dispersed pockets of the globe, graduating to the realm of state sponsored economic terrorism. As “Gerald Celente” consistently and aptly states, “Currency wars + Trade Wars = Real Wars.”

All of the economic wheeling and dealing continues on as the “Arab Spring” explodes into a caballing year round inferno engulfing the entire Middle East. Daily at the United Nations, permanent Security Council members China, Russia, France, United Kingdom, and the United States spar over regional influence with each passing veto and resolution.

This is most apparent in Syria where Russia opposes any intervention as it struggles to prop up the government of its last remaining ally in the Mediterranean region. Russian naval forces stationed at Tartus, Syria may be the last line of repellent preventing NATO intervention.

The lines of frienemy engagement get blurrier with every passing engagement.

Simultaneously as the United States prepares to implement its own austerity measure policy that has carefully been repackaged and marketed to the public under the label sequestration, it is arming rebels in Syria. All claims of being in financial dire straits gets immediately lost within the noise of controlling key choke points around the globe.

One cannot forget less than two years after watching the Al Qaeda flag being proudly raised in the Libyan city of Benghazi, that America’s new found ally the Free Syrian Army are the protégés of Al Qaeda.

The life cycle of keyboards do not possess the durability to correctly and fully analyze threats posed by the uncontrollable Kim Jong Un ruled North Korea. The isolated peninsula nation even managed to startle its longtime ally China into voting in favor of U.N. Security Council resolution 2094. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was quoted as saying;

“China supports the UN Security Council’s necessary and moderate response to the nuclear test of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).”

Barely beyond two weeks later newly appointed Chinese President Xi Jinping, warned the West not to meddle in Syria’s civil war while on his first visit to Russia.

Not even the mythical country of Chimerica can rescue the too big to fail world from the natural rate of failure. Governments around the world are taking sides now under the cloak of every global economic and geopolitical conflict, because nations know that a hegemonic storm is coming with no evacuation routes or shelter in sight. Once more, honesty of time is proving that which cannot last forever won’t.

Image courtesy: European Parliament

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The police in United Arab Emirates (UAE) have warned against wearing vendetta masks while celebrating the 41st national day of the UAE. Any person who wears this mask would face legal questionnaires, as the mask refers to opposition to the government and authorities.

According to the police, wearing this mask or any similar symbol violates the security of the state. It is considered a criminal offense and punishable by law, even for those who don’t know what this mask might refer to.

In a Gulf news website, a Dubai police official said “Using any symbol that insults the country or instigates unrest against its system is not allowed. We urge citizens to celebrate using other symbols such as national flags, slogans or photos that are more appropriate to the happy occasion of National Day.”

The vendetta mask, also called Guy Fawkes mask, was designed to hide Guy Fawkes. Guy Fawkes was the principle of the group that failed to bomb the British House of Lords in London in 1605.  In the end he was captured and hanged in Westminster January 31,1606.

Every November 5, the people in the UK, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa celebrate Guy Fawkes Night for his failure to bomb the British House of Lords.

The advertisements to sell this mask in the UAE have shown up in some online stores featuring number 41 and the UAE flag colors, red, black, green and white. The price of the mask is about $20 USD.  After the police call, most of the advertisers have withdrawn the advertisements from the online sites, especially in the UAE-based web sites and blogs.

Vendetta is a Latin word used in English and other languages which means revenge. This mask was so popular during the Arab spring demonstrations in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and Libya revolutions. In these countries, many protesters used to wear these masks to show their maximum discontent on their government while calling to overthrow it.

This year, the UAE is celebrating the 41 anniversary of being united and independent. The UAE is a confederation of 7 sheikhdoms which were united on December 2, 1971. Sometimes they call it union day rather than national day.

The capital of UAE is Abu Dhabi, while Dubai is the commercial capital and the most famous city in the country. The other sheikhdoms are Sharjah, Ajman , Umm al-Quwain , Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah.

Image Courtesey of  Uros Zunic / Shutterstock.com

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, issued a new law for electronic crimes that will punish anyone who tries to overthrow the government, hold illegal demonstrations, or affect the dignity of the state by making fun of or taunting the rulers of the emirates.

This law amended the previous law, which was issued in 2006. The former law for electronic crimes stated that anyone who promotes pornography or exposure of the heavenly religions is sentenced to prison.

The new law states that any person who uses the internet to harm the reputation, prestige any of its institutions or its chairman or his deputy or rulers or guardians’ royal family or deputy governors or flag or national anthem or symbols, will be punished. The punishment will be by imprisonment, according to the new law.

Also, the new law states it is illegal for any person who establish, manage or supervise a site on the Internet to call to the overthrowing or change of the regime or government, capture or to disable the provisions of the constitution or laws of the country.

The law also calls for imprisonment for those who use the Internet in the “planning, organization, promotion, or calling for demonstrations or marches without a license from the authorities.”

The UAE, which is one of the richest countries in the world, has not seen any massive protests during the uproar of the Arab Spring. The authorities have arrested, since the beginning of the year, about 60 locals accused of threatening the security of the country according to UAE official resources.

The UAE authorities announced in mid-July that it planned to dismantle a group that claimed to be plotting against security and opposed the constitutions of the Gulf states. On November 4, they group went to trial, a process which is still ongoing.

The Dubai Chief of Police, Dahi Khalfan, accused The Muslim Brotherhood party of attempting to overthrow the Arabian Gulf governments; the cell members who were arrested were charged with conspiring against state security and declaring their allegiance to the party. Most of them were using social media websites such as twitter and Facebook to call for public demonstration in the country.

This law might affect the social media coverage of the events in UAE; channels which played a very important role during the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan and Yemeni revolutions. Most of the demonstrations in these countries were mainly organized by Facebook and Twitter  activists. It will definitely affect the right to self-expression in the country because the written thought of people could be considered anti-government by law, thus forcing everything to think twice before saying anything.

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Two wars are being waged in Syria. There is the physical fighting going on between the rebels and government troops but there is also a media war going on in which the results of the physical battles are being hidden or changed to misrepresent facts. One young activist, Yahya Abdulrahman, a physics student at Aleppo University claimed, “The regime is fighting the people in two ways. One is with the army. The other is with the media. There are parts of the Free Syrian Army that are fighting the regime. But there are other parts fighting the regime’s hackers.””

Smart phones have been key in the Syrian uprising – just like in the Arab Spring revolutions – because, according to the Christian Science Monitor, it is a way for the people to undermine the state media (which is controlled by Assad) and get supporters within Syria and in the rest of the world. So far the Syrian government has banned access to YouTube and Facebook, but several of the youth have found ways around these government firewalls.

Having smart phones and access to computers and internet allow the rebels to communicate with friends and family as well as talk to soldiers who want to defect to the rebel army.

Many Syrian rebels have risked their lives while fighting the media war. According to the Guardian hundreds of video activists have joined the revolution through videography; most are male, young, and technologically capable individuals. Abdulrahman, one of these activists, admits that filming is just as dangerous as fighting with a gun: “If the army sees anyone with a camera they try and kill him first.”

However, the video aspect of the revolution is just as important as the actual physical fighting. Assad controls Syria’s television stations which claim that the Free Syrian Army (the rebels) is a group of “terrorists” and “al-Qaida” while also broadcasting pro-regime propaganda. Abu Mhio, a rebel media activist claims, “When we will be free, [Syrian TV] will be dead.”

If Assad controls all of the media in the country he can prevent the successes of the rebels from being reported which lowers their support and prevents more people from getting involved. In order to ensure that the world and the Syrian people actually know what is going on in Syria they must record it for themselves, even if it is emotionally tolling and life-threatening.

Abdulrahman was arrested once for video-recording a protest on his campus. After being beaten and made to sign a piece of paper claiming he was an informant, he was released and continued filming for the rebels. He has also filmed the dead in the streets to show the toll of the fighting. “I filmed one of the children killed last week. We hadn’t eaten all day because of Ramadan. But afterwards I couldn’t touch any food.”

In previous years rebels have not had such technological access to aid them in their cause. Hafez al-Assad, the current ruler’s father, ruled Syria from 1970 and was responsible for destroying the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people. One rebel fighter explained to the Christian Science Monitor, “His father destroyed Hama in a few days, but there was no TV there and no internet to show the world. But today we have the internet, we photograph and film and have Al Jazeera, so people know. They can see what is happening.”

Few journalists have been allowed within Syria in the recent months of fighting, but those that have, have received threats. One Guardian journalist received a death threat via a tweet from a member of the regime stating, “I pray every night that you die.”

Those journalists that are allowed in the country are also not provided a lot of access. Another journalist, Alex Thomson, tweeted “Syrian government is losing the PR war” when they refused to let him interview or record the Syrian military.

Ultimately, winning the media war will be just as important as winning the physical war for both sides. The rebels have succeeded in many ways but they must take Aleppo in order to really start making changes. According to Burhan Ghalioun, a member of the Syrian National Council currently in Paris, if the rebels take Aleppo “there will be nothing more that will stand in the way of the Free Syrain Army. Hama, Homs, to the outskirts of Damascus have in large part been liberated.”

Image Courtesy of  Omar Chatriwala

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With the proclamation of Mursi as the new Egyptian President, it seems that the revolution of the Egyptian Arab Spring has triumphed. For now it seems that everything is good. In fact, Mursi has promised to be the president for all Egyptians without an exception. His claims appear to be serious: a woman and a Christian man will be the vice-presidents of the newly formed government, something that was unthinkable few months ago. However, we will have to wait to see if this will become a real fact.

Even though not all Egyptians agree with the elections that have taken place in their country, Egypt is the quintessential example of the triumph of the revolution this Arab spring. There has also been some progress in countries like Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, where the authoritarian Presidents, Ben Ali’s, Gaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh fell respectively. On the other side of the coin, are countries such as Syria and Morocco that are still fighting to overthrow the established system, and have to fight against the silence that surrounds these revolutions.

An example of the revolutions that have recently started is the case of Northern Sudan, which has more press now that Egypt has achieved their first goal. It seems that what started off being a small movement, has crystallized into a bigger mobilization.

According to www.sudaneseonline.com, the trigger has been the cuts that the Sudanese government has executed after the former South Sudan achieved their independence. After this, the Sudanese Government has suspended the gasoline subsidies, taxes have increased and thousands of civil servants have been fired.

Therefore, the Sudanese have gone out to the streets to protest, under the slogan of “We want the regime out.” They are demanding the resignation of the National Congress Party, Al-Bashir’s party, to be replaced by a transitional government that should represent all geographical regions of Sudan.

In the meantime, the police remain loyal to Al-Bashir, and he has ordered all his forces to stop the anti-government protests. Therefore, police have responded with attacks and detentions, and three newspapers have been shut down. It seems that the Internet will be a blackout sooner or later. In the meantime, Saata Ahmed al Hajj, General Secretary of the Sudanese Commission for the Defense of Freedoms and Rights, has been arrested.

But the Sudanese case is not an easy one, since there are other open fronts, which actually are more important. First off, there is the genocide in the western zone of Darfur that has been plaguing them for the last two decades. Sudan president, Omar Al-Bashir, who has been in power for more than two decades, has been giving help to the Janjaweed, the Arab militians that are perpetrating these terrible acts, and the citizens from the other parts of Sudan are finally complaining about it with demonstrations.

Secondly, the armed conflict between Sudan and the new Republic of South Sudan for oil control is at risk of turning into an open war. In 2005, these two sides of the country signed a peace agreement that ended a civil war for 22 years, dividing the country into two: the south, where two thirds of oil reserves are, and the north, which is developed. Both sides agreed to split revenues from oil production by half, but not one of them are complying with what they agreed.

Will we have a new success story like this in Egypt? Time will tell, but we must not forget these more important issues in Sudan.

Image Courtesy of  Oxfam International

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Washington, U.S.A. — As World Population Day approaches, Wilson Center consultant and demographer Elizabeth Leahy Madsen says the Arab Spring demonstrates that countries with very young age structures are prone both to higher incidence of civil conflict and undemocratic governance. “Among the five countries where revolt took root, those with the earliest success in ousting autocratic leaders also had the most mature age structures and the least youthful populations,” she writes on the New Security Beat . What happens next in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria will further test the connection between youth and democracy discovered by fellow Wilson Center consulting demographer Richard Cincotta.

In South Asia, Madsen finds that as Afghanistan and Pakistan’s political circumstances have become more entwined, their demographic paths are more closely parallel than expected. “For Afghanistan, given its myriad socioeconomic, political, cultural, and geographic challenges, this is good news. But for Pakistan, where efforts to meet family planning needs have fallen short of capacity, it is not,” she writes in the first issue of the newly relaunched ECSP Report, “Afghanistan, Against the Odds: A Demographic Surprise.”

Other top population issues to watch:

• New commitments to family planning: An international summit in London on July 11, co-hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development and supported by USAID and UNFPA, may produce financial commitments toward meeting a new and ambitious goal of generating $4 billion to fund contraceptives for 120 million women in developing countries by 2020.
• Changing fertility rates in Africa : Contraceptive use over the past five years is growing much faster than the regional average in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Rwanda, leading to declining fertility rates. However, contraceptive use in other countries, including Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, are declining or showing only modest increases.
• Revised global population projections : The 2013 revision of the World Population Prospects will provide a new global population prediction for 2050. This figure can vary dramatically: If the global fertility rate changes by 0.5 children per woman in either direction, the total population could be more than one billion higher or lower in 2050.

Since 1994, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) has actively pursued the connections between the environment, health, population, development, conflict, and security. ECSP brings together scholars, policymakers, the media, and practitioners through events, research, publications, multimedia content (audio and video), and our award-winning blog, New Security Beat. The Environmental Change and Security Program Report 14 is the latest volume of ECSP’s flagship publication. Published since 1996, ECSP Report is now an online series of policy briefs.

The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact. By conducting relevant and timely research and promoting dialogue from all perspectives, it works to address the critical current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world

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On June 30, 2012 the fifth Egypt’s president, Mohammed Morsi, took office after he won the elections in the African country earlier this year. The first democratically oriented Islamist leader of the Arab republic is now ready to turn a new chapter of the history of his home country. The new Egyptian head of state promised that he will listen more attentively to what his compatriots have to say, because as he himself declared during his first speech in Cairo University on Saturday, “There is no authority above the authority of people.”

On February 11, 2011, the previous president, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to resign after a powerful wave of protests against his authoritarian regime took place. Mubarak spent more than a quarter of a century on this post, leading strong but unsuccessful politics of repressions and restrictions. The enormous income gaps, together with the exceptive pressure on behalf of the government, were the main precondition for the growing dissatisfaction with the former leader. The revolution in Egypt was a turning point for the country. It was a national victory against the injustice and oppression.

The elections in June 2012 were the serial step to the long awaited change in the African republic. Morsi promised a democratic government, but whether he will keep his promise will be known later in future.

Although the Islamist leader won the elections only four percent over his opponent, it was a great landslide not only for him, but for the country he is now to rule. For some people, the name Morsi became a symbol of the forthcoming change in the Arab republic.

Despite being raised in poverty, Morsi received a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in engineering from Cairo University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in the U.S. The new Egyptian leader was invited to teach in a prominent American University; however, life outside the motherland was not the thing he and his wife, Naglaa Ali Mahmoud, dreamed about. They returned together to Egypt, where their family started rising from nothing to reach the top.

During his presidential campaign, he promised that his priority will be the construction of a democratic country. Other aspects of his policy will be the issues regarding women’s rights and the improvement of the tense relationships with Israel.

Although the 60-year-old Morsi is said to “represent the older, more conservative wing of the Muslim Brotherhood” that “openly endorses a strict Islamic vision,” in the course of time he proved that he supports the widespread concept that people have to struggle for power, because otherwise no one will give it to them. He spent seven months in jail during Hosni Mubarak’s regime because of his participation in the protests against the repressions and inequality in the country at that time.

The fact that an Islamist won the elections, at a certain degree, surprised the political circles around the world. His campaign was under the heading “Islam is the solution.”

Aabout the connection between Islamism and democracy, he personally commented that “There is no such thing called an Islamic democracy. There is democracy only.”

The White House and the European Union supported the choice of the Egyptians, offering their congratulations to the new president and to the nation as a whole. U.S. President Barack Obama called both Mohamed Morsi and his biggest opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, in order to encourage them to work together for the prosperity of the African country and to express the willingness of the U.S. to give a helping hand to the new government if necessary.

The elections in the country put a symbolical end to the Arab Spring there. Egypt is now passing through the most strenuous moment in its history. The greatest and most disputable battle in the African republic may have already finished, but the people are yet to begin constructing the democratic system in the country.

Image Courtesy of  Freedom and Justice Party

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Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, famed Bahrani activist and former president and co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, ended his 110 day hunger strike 28 May 2012. According to al-Khawaja’s wife, the activist ended his protest after he was force fed by doctors; al-Khawaja also believes that the hunger strike has finally begun to draw enough attention to the rights violations in Bahrain. Friends and colleagues of al-Khawaja also called for him to end his hunger strike.

Al-Khawaja was sentenced to life in prison in June 2011 with at least eight other activists. Twenty in total were tried by military tribunal as well; seven were tried in absentia. These activists, most of whom are Shia Muslims, were charged with trying to overthrow the Sunni royal family. Since the military ruling the highest court in Bahrain, the Court of Cassation, has said that the case must be heard by the civilian Court of Appeal and threw out the decision from the tribunal; however, al-Khawaja remains in prison at least until the end of the trial.

For a short time in April many activists around the world and family members of al-Khawaja worried that he had been killed or died in prison. The activist went missing and neither his wife nor his lawyer were allowed access to see him.

Nabeel Rajab, another famous Shia activist who was arrested for inciting protests via social networks, was released in late May. Rajab is the current president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and had expressed concern about al-Khawaja when he was being force fed.

Al-Khawaja’s daughter, Zainab al-Khawaja, was arrested 21 April 2012 after she was found sitting on a main road in a lone protest demanding the release of her father, the end to the government crackdown on protesters, and the cancellation of the Formula 1 races in Bahrain. She sentenced to one month in jail but was released for time served on remand. Zainab al-Khawaja was also forced to pay a fine of 200 dinar (US$530).

Al-Khawaja received political asylum in Denmark in 1992 after the Bahrani government began arresting and torturing those it suspected of trying to overthrow the government. While he was living Scandinavia, he and other Bahrani activist founded the Bahrain Human Rights Organization. Al-Khawaja returned to Bahrain in 1999 after several political reforms were passed and created the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. During the Arab Spring Revolutions of 2011, al-Khawaja was a leader of several non-violent, pro-democracy protests in Bahrain.

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohammed Mursi, addressed Egyptian voters on Tuesday May 29, 2012 about concerns that his presidency would result in a strict Islamic state. Mursi claimed that not only would his Egyptian government be secular but he would emphasize the creation of an institution for the executive office instead of the presidency being one person.

Mursi spoke after his rival’s, Ahmed Shafiq’s, headquarters were attacked. Several store rooms were set fire to and computers were smashed.

Ahmed Shafiq, the rival to Mursi, was the prime minister under Mubarak, the former president removed through the most recent coup during the Arab Spring. Many of the youth voters are distrustful of Shafiq because of his relationship with the previous regime. However, many moderates support Shafiq because of his war and business records. He fought in three wars, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, as an air force pilot. He then went on to renovate EgyptAir which made the airline competitive and increased tourism.

Mursi claimed, “the Superman era is over,” emphasizing his desire to create an institution for the Presidency. Mursi also insisted that he would appoint individuals from opposing parties, not only from the Muslim Brotherhood.

The candidate addressed social issues in his speech as well. He made specific mention of the Coptic Christians and that they are the ‘brothers’ of Muslims and “will have full rights that are equal to those enjoyed by Muslims.” Additionally, Mursi claimed that Islamic dress codes would not be enforced; therefore, women would not be forced to wear the hijab. Mursi stated, “women have a right to freely choose the attire that suits them.”

Mursi’s statements came out amidst pressures from many Egyptian parties to have a candidate guarantee social reforms and political participation for all. There are also worries that the Muslim Brotherhood would create an autocratic rule or a government like that in Iran.

Originally the Muslim Brotherhood claimed that they would not put forth a presidential candidate and would focus solely on the parliament seats. The existence of Mursi as a presidential candidate at all thus reduces the Brotherhood’s credibility.

Mursi’s statement has indeed peaked the interest of several Egyptian political groups including the Social Democratic Party, the Ghad Party, and representatives from the National Association for Change. However these groups are still distrustful of both Shafiq and Mursi and have organized to demand more promises and action from Mursi before they agree to support him. Ayman Nour, head of the Ghad party, stated that the first condition was Mursi’s resignation from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Mursi is currently the chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and he stated that if he were to be elected president he would immediately resign his position.

The parties also demand that a presidential team of ten political figures from varying backgrounds be added to the executive branch to ensure that the minorities and underrepresented are no longer discriminated against or denied a voice. Additionally the parties request that a special committee be created to recombine the political programs of different presidential candidates to form a kind of national project.

Although these parties are willing to at least bargain with Mursi other parties are still very distrustful. The Wafd Party still claims that it will neither endorse Mursi nor Shafiq and finds neither candidate suitable. In addition there is a boycotting campaign for those who prefer neither candidate.

The most recent polls show Mursi only one percentage point ahead of Shafiq. The race will be very close and both candidates will need to win over the youth vote especially or risk losing those who created and supported the revolution.

Image Courtesy of  MOHPhoto / Shutterstock.com

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Washington, U.S.A -  On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, Layalina Productions celebrated a decade of television diplomacy in the Middle East at its 10th Anniversary Gala, being held at the Newseum in Washington, DC. At the Gala, internationally acclaimed three times Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist Thomas L. Friedman and The Honorable Tara Sonenshine, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, provided remarks and highlight Layalina’s efforts to strengthen U.S.-Arab relations.

With its mission being to educate, inform, and inspire audiences across the Middle East and North Africa, with special emphasis on youth. The organization’s efforts focus on promoting greater cultural understanding through award winning television shows, publications and educational exchanges.

“Young people are our best hope to bridge the cultural gap that currently exists between the United States and the Arab world. Layalina is dedicated to fostering better understanding among cultures, and our hope is to substantially increase the prospects of long term peace in the Middle East,” Comments Ambassador Richard Fairbanks, Layalina’s Founder and Chairman.

Layalina’s dozen credits include the award-winning documentary Life After Death, which serves as an indictment against terrorism and the barbaric targeting of civilians, and the recently completed Back from the Brink, a documentary about the efforts of three dissimilar communities around the world to counter the spread of violent extremism.

On the Road in America, a hit series whose third season will soon air in primetime in the Middle East and North Africa region on MBC — the most watched Arab network — follows four Arab university students traveling across the United States.

The series focuses on Arab and American attitudes toward each other as seen through the eyes of the Arab visitors and the Americans whom they encounter on their journeys. Over the past two seasons, the show has more than doubled its viewing audience – from 4.5 million viewers to 9 million viewers per episode.  American Caravan, the reverse of On the Road, features six young Americans discovering the Arab world in the footsteps of the Arab Spring. American Caravan is currently in post-production.

The Layalina 10th anniversary celebration week included a luncheon on May 17th featuring Layalina Counselor Dr. Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

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San Francisco, U.S.A. - In 2010, the self-immolation of a produce vendor in Tunisia catalyzed a series of massive democratic revolutions and uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

These events would come to be known as the Arab Spring. In some countries, strongmen who had held power for decades collapsed under the force of youthful popular movements. In others, despots violently and mercilessly clamped down on demonstrators.

Now That We Have Tasted Hope  is a collaboration between San Francisco–based publishers McSweeney’s and Byliner Inc. The substantial e-book collects the most important primary source documents from those historic uprisings, telling the story of the Arab Spring from the perspective of those who lived it—men and women, young and old, from all sectors of society: musicians, poets, writers, political activists, actors, labor unionists, journalists, workers, and professionals.

Voices from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria provide a comprehensive and captivating narrative of the momentous events of last year. From the harrowing accounts of tortured protesters to the hollow appeals of crumbling regimes and the triumphant songs of revolutionaries, these documents catalog the events of the Arab Spring in all its complexity and drama. They will remain fresh and urgent for a long time to come.

Now That We Have Tasted Hope is edited by Daniel Gumbiner, the associate director of the Zeitoun Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the continued rebuilding and social advancement of New Orleans and to the promotion of understanding between people of disparate faiths around the world.

The foreword is written by Diana Abouali, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, and the introduction is by Elliott Colla, coeditor of the e-magazine Jadaliyya and author of Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, and Egyptian Modernity.

Image Courtesy of   MOHPhoto / Shutterstock.com

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Moscow, Russia – Two Arab Spring revolutionaries, Nabeel Rajab and Alaa Abd al-Fattah explain why the reform movements stalled in Bahrain and have destabilized in Egypt on the May 8th episode of “The World Tomorrow” on RT.

Nabeel Rajab is the leading human rights activist from Bahrain and the founder of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights; right prior to the air of his interview to Julian Assange he was arrested by the Bahraini government forces and will now stand trial for inciting the acts of protests.

Alaa Abd al-Fattah is the Egyptian writer and political activist who was a prominent figure in the Egyptian revolution. The two guests discuss the impetus behind the uprisings in the Middle East, what has been achieved and the prospects for democracy and reform in these countries.

“I speak to two leading revolutionaries: one from Bahrain, where the revolution failed; one from Egypt, where the revolution is now in turmoil. What makes a revolution? And where is the Arab Spring going to go?” – commented Assange on the upcoming episode.

In the interview given prior to his arrest Rajab commented on the struggle of the protest movement inBahrain on the show: “This is freedom. This is democracy that we are fighting for. It has a cost and we have to pay this cost, and the cost might be very expensive – as we have paid high cost in Bahrain. And, we are willing to pay that for the changes that we are fighting for.”

The fourth episode of Julian Assange’s program will air globally on Tuesday, May 8th at 15:30 Moscowtime /11:30 GMT/7:30 EDT across all RT channels in English, Arabic and Spanish, and will be rebroadcast every two hours thereafter.

The progress of the Arab Spring movements across different countries is a topic that Julian Assange has explored continuously starting with the very first episode of “The World Tomorrow.” Interview with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah caused a global media firestorm and trended on Twitter throughout the day. The most recent episode featured an extended discussion with Moncef Marzouki, the interim President of Tunisia, on democratic reforms in the cradle of the Arab Spring.

“The World Tomorrow” is RT’s weekly interview program created and hosted by the WikiLeaks founder. Promotional materials, an exclusive interview with Assange and the full-length video of the aired episodes are available at http://assange.rt.com.

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In late 2010, a wave of protest and civil unrest swept through nearly every Arab nation. Dubbed the Arab Spring, the protest’s whipped through the region like one of their legendary sand storms, and swept rulers in the countries Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen out of power. In their wake have been uprisings in Bahrain, Oman, Algeria, and Syria.

The term “Arab Spring” is meant to be an analogy for the thawing out of the average Arab citizens acceptance of rigid and authoritarian regimens. This is more a hope than a reality, and the events have exposed America’s weakness and limits in foreign policy regarding the Arab region.

From the start, the Obama administration has had a schizophrenic response to the events of the Arab spring. The protesters in Iran, arguably the start of the Arab spring, got very little, if any, support from the U.S. Though President Obama was near-silent toward Iran, the President was quite forceful in telling President Mubarak of Egypt he had to go. Odd, given that Mubarak was the only true ally of the U.S. in that area.

He might have been a dictator, but he was our dictator. Now, the Muslim brotherhood stands poised to take political power, just as Hamas did in Palestine. As Libyans began to fight against Gaddafi, the U.S. took a position of leading from behind in helping to enforce a no-fly zone, and providing other low-key military assistance to the rebels, while Syrian rebels were getting, and still are getting, slaughtered by the hundreds with only words of support from the international community.

Opponents of President Obama believe his ambivalence is another sign of weakness in his administration, but you can argue that he’s politically stuck. The stark realty is that Iran, Syria, and every other situation in the Middle East exposes an ugly truth about foreign policy for that region; there is not much that the U.S. can do.

Americans, the citizens not the politicians, are a strange lot. We cannot stomach human rights violations wherever they occur: China, North Korea, Darfur, South Africa, or the Middle East nations. When we see 8500 innocent civilians killed in Syria, we feel the need to do something to stop it.

However, the only way to stop killing on that scale in a country a world away is through force. We are either going to send troops in, or we have to arm the rebels and lend military support similar to what was done in Libya. Unfortunately, the American public does not want to do that, and therefore neither does President Obama.

Instead, we get empty statements from our President and other world leaders about how President Assad must give up power. Really?  According to whom? Every time a statement like that is issued, I hear President Assad saying, “So what? Who are you to tell me what to do,” and “Okay, well make me leave.”

Even if President Assad is not saying those exact words, they are certainly the sentiments of the reality on ground. Dictators are either forced from power by their own people or forced out by an outside force. In either case, force is what is needed for changes.

Unless we force him from power, there is nothing we can do. And that’s the problem every President must face at times. Situations in the world that we would like to alter, but the choices on the table on how to do it are not good choices. Whether we are talking about halting the killing in Syria, or stopping Iran from going nuclear, force is the only thing that is ultimately going to work. And going that route is fraught with other implications and unintended consequences.

Diplomacy is its own minefield. It takes a long time to work, which is not exactly good for the people getting shot at in Syria. And an unspoken assumption in diplomacy is that the person across the table is a rational actor. The heads of oppressive governments are seldom rational, and rationality, as Americans and Europeans measure it, is completely absent from the Muslim world.

In America, for instance, ostensibly everyone gets a say while the Middle East is fraught with authoritarian discipline, often guided by religious doctrine; a “do this, or there will be consequences” approach. Couple that with the general principle of dictatorship — doing what is necessary to stay in power — and you have a volatile mix that Americans may never understand.

President Reagan, in his memoirs, has famously lamented getting the U.S. involved in Lebanon. His opinion being that if he had to do it again, he would not, because, we (America) do not understand the Middle East. This remains true to a large degree today. President Obama is in charge now, but if it were President McCain, or if it turns to be a Republican candidate in 2012, not much will change.

Force is what is necessary, and we cannot send troops into every Muslim country that decides to start shooting up their citizenry. Does anyone really see a President Romney sending in ground troops to Syria? No, the best we can hope for is a President, present or future, who can explain that some things we cannot affect, and that the things we can, may require force.

We will have to make hard choices about what is in our national interest, preventing Iran from a nuclear bomb, and things that, while sickening, do not affect the U.S. directly, like what is happening in Syria. The only question remaining is whether the voting public will understand and accept those distinctions.

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If until recently, the problematic situation in Syria was thought to be a temporary instability, then today, it can be said that there is a possibility of civil war in the Arab country. The protests against the president, Bashar al-Assad, and his regime grew into a continued and strenuous struggle that evoked the public opinion. How long this will last is unknown.

It is too late for the Syrians to peacefully extinguish the bloody conflagration. The victims of the uprising are increasing all the time, and by now, they exceed 7,600 people.  This includes both civilians and military men. Whether Syria will have the success of Egypt is one of the most asked questions, concerning society all around the world, because the national issue that started almost a year ago, has gradually turned into a universal one.

The correspondent for London’s ‘The Sunday Times’, Marie Colvin, and the French photographer, Remi Ochlic, were cruelly killed in the city of Homs during a siege. Until now, people have not been thinking about the jeopardy and the consequences of this uprising, but the tragic death of the two journalists in Syria proved that the situation in the Arab world is going off the rails.

On February 24, in Tunisia, a meeting was held by the “Friends of Syria”. During the meeting, around 60 countries insisted on stopping the outrage in troubled Syria. The world leaders unanimously decided that more serious measures against the Assad’s regime need to be taken. They are considering issuing an ultimatum to the Assad government. Their main goal is to send aid in order to help the civilians of the revolutionary country.

Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, appealed to all nations to put bans on the import of oil from Syrians as well as on traveling to and from the Arab country. According to Clinton, it is the high cost that the Syrian officials have to pay for not taking into account the opinion of the international community. She also added that the U.S. will allot $10 million in aid to the Syrian citizens.

Only the leaders of China and Russia still support the Syrian president. They were against the UN resolutions of ending the Assad’s regime, stating that the these declarations will cause more violence in the Arab country. Some diplomats connected the actions of China and Russia to their previous union during the Cold War, but one is sure, with their attitude towards the UN resolutions and the current affairs in Western Asia, they incurred the sharp tongue of the U.S. Secretary of State.

Hilary Clinton described their veto regarding the resolutions as “despicable”. “It is just despicable, and I ask, ‘Whose side are they on?’ They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people,” she said during the meeting in Tunisia.When the Arab Spring will come is still not apparent, but it is an incontrovertible fact that the uprising has transformed into a universal issue that has strained relations between world leaders.

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One year after the “Arab spring”, the southern shores of the Mediterranean remain unstable and fragile. For European people, the current situation means that they will now have to change their approach to take due account of the four challenges that the countries of the Maghreb must face.

The first of these is the economic and social challenge. Unless we meet expectations expressed, political reforms will not be sufficient. The question of how to use and draw up a new development model must be at the heart of the leaders’ concerns. Though Morocco undoubtedly has the most offensive strategy, the Tunisian economy is now fragmented and Algeria has a rentier economy characterised by closure.

Only a response to this first challenge will overcome the challenge of democratisation. Though revolutions have brought a return to aspirations for change by the populations, the results of elections are cause for concern. However, the reality principle must be imposed on everyone. Everything is working to reinforce the democratic framework and the new teams should not be demonised – we should give them the powers they need, work with them and judge them by their actions.

Economic and social developments will also help confront the security challenge. Al Qaida, which has sought to use aggressive tactics, has not as yet reaped any major successes in the Maghreb. Another risk has to do with the increasing insecurity in the Sahel, under the dual effect of terrorist groups establishing bases there and the repercussions of the war in Libya.

There will not be any progress without a real desire to face up to the cooperation challenge. The “Arab spring” should be an opportunity to determine the need for regional integration. However, any improvement could be compromised if the conflict in the Western Sahara is not settled, despite the independence proposal tabled by Morocco in 2007, the most credible and most realistic solution. Europeans have, in all instances, nothing to lose by relying on initiatives moving towards maximum synergy.

The report was presented in Brussels at the Second Meeting on Sustainable Security in the Maghreb on Thursday 16 February 2012. For further information, visit http://www.institut-thomas-more.org and http://securitedurable.com.

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The World Economic Forum (WEF), based in Geneva, have been meeting up for their yearly convention on January 25 and will be concluding the exclusive gathering on January 29. The WEF was established in 1971 and is an independent international organization formally designed to improve the state of the world and organize annual meetings in Davos to discuss, debate, redefine, and rebut many of the world’s most pressing economic and political issues.

Every year in snow-covered Davos, WEF organizes a meeting hailed as a convergence of the elite, from the world of business, governance and academics engaged in finding strategic solutions to global economic problems and perhaps acting as a counsel of change.

This year, the theme is “The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models” which have be organized in the backdrop of eurozone fiscal fissure, tussle for reform and installation of democracy in the Arab world, slow and sensitive global growth, and lastly, the unending enigma of capitalistic disorder.

Assume the world is a stage. We have seen many despotic characters fall in the Arab world, and many characters emerging with ponderous levels of debt on their backs, casting a shadow of  imminent instability to the global economy. Also, the world witnessed a few Asian players taking the lead in the economic game, and there has been a transformation in the totality of the economic and political picture of the world.

Nonetheless, it will be intriguing to see at this juncture, as the European monetary union is on the verge of collapse due to fiscal disorder and as capitalism is brutally blamed for excessive greed, what transformation WEF can bring or advocate in Davos.

The co-efficient of congress 

Due to several fundamental changes occurring in the world, we have lost sight of where the world is going. Professor Klaus Schwab, the founder of WEF, stated that we clearly need new models for global, regional, and national business decision-making. According to him, new models are needed to account for the fundamental power shifts that have already happened and continue to take place. Additionally, the following are also needed:

1. New models are needed to acknowledge that we live together in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious world.
2. A model is needed to seriously address the social impact of globalization and new waves of technological innovation.
3. Another model is needed for job creation.

As correctly recognized by Professor Schwab, there is a need to review the distribution of power in the world, such as new shifts in balance of economic power from west to east, so there can be a greater variation in attendees. Countries which were not a part of this gathering in the past have been invited for the 2012 edition and this time around, the WEF is welcoming people from the Arab world, including Egyptian presidential candidates, the Tunisian prime minister, and the Libyan interim prime minister.

Speaking to journalists near the forum’s headquarters, Professor Schwab stated recently, “Capitalism, in its current form, has no place in the world around us.” Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation said, “It is too optimistic to say we need a new system. The system is not working because of extraordinary greed, extraordinary inequality and attacks on workers’ rights that are leading to a crash in demand.”

Income inequality is rampant in the world today, according to a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED). Wage gaps between the rich and the poor have reached their highest point in 30 years.

It has been observed that job creation is the key to eliminating the disparities in people’s incomes as well as sluggish growth rate and most importantly social unrest, so there is hope that the WEF meeting at Davos can inspire the reconstruction of a defunct system of capitalism by introducing far reaching changes.

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Andreas Kaplan and Michael Heinlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.

According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and micro blogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g. YouTube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life “Wikipedia, Social media”.

Today it had become almost the main source for information and secondary source for advertisement in the world. Twitter as a social media is not as popular in the Middle East as facebook, which became a hit over night.

Twitter for Egyptians is either unknown, or not understandable, so in both cases useless, but worldwide it is a good communicational tool between companies and their buyers, celebrities and fans or people who share the same interest — all can communicate easily and find each other fast.

Although twitter is an easy, fast communication platform, Egyptians used to prefer facebook because it has much more diversity on offer. In Egypt, there are many social levels — the lower class, middle lower class, middle higher class and high class — but they all have internet access at either their home or internet cafés which makes it easy for them to connect to social media.

It was easy to understand facebook and how people can communicate through it, which made it popular fast. But for Twitter there were two reasons against it: it came second and was difficult to understand. Twitter in the past didn’t have the advertising on the web it has today which limited its outreach in countries such as Egypt.

And for those who knew about it, it was hard and obscure to them to understand how it actually worked. Eventually the Egyptian people learned about Twitter and some created accounts but usage was limited as often is the case with communities that depends on personal networks.

The story took a turn during the Egyptian revolution on January 25 where protesters used twitter to plan the millions of protest and to discuss it without the knowledge of the government. The twist made a lot of people want to join Twitter to be able to follow the current events and reach audiences worldwide to tell them about the revolution.

According to India Times, “approximately 15,000 citizens used Twitter accounts to find and spread information about the protests.” Twitter helped spread the thoughts of the protesters and the events from el Tahrir square. Reporters, ordinary people and foreigners tweeted worldwide about the revolution both before and during it.

After several hours of protesting, people worldwide would know what happened through Twitter updates. News channels quoted the protesters via Twitter and three days later the government blocked the site from the internet because they finally understood its power.

The administrators of the social network knew about it and made phone calls to people in Egypt so the revolution could continue to tweet its message. They even made televised announcements to let Egypt know the world was listening.

Unfortunately after the end of the revolution, few have continued to use their twitter account. The age group still using it are also still between 16 and 35 years of age, meaning older people have yet to catch on. Still, you can find shops and companies in Egypt which have chosen to keep their presence on the social media site and use it for advertisement.

Twitter had a big role during the revolution but afterwards, only a small amount of people have continued to use it. Despite the excitement and wonder of the events that led to the fall of Mubarak, Twitter remains an unremarkable communications platform in Egypt — simply the fastest platform for information dissemination for a limited amount of time.
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The September 11 terrorist attacks brought more than the loss of American lives, they brought considerable impact on internal affairs of the United States. The CIA’s involvement with the NYPD is considered, by many, another stain on the Agency’s long history of scandals.

The CIA has been accused of infiltrating the police department and using its resources to conduct spying operations on a domestic level, mainly targeting the Muslim community in New York City. After a thorough investigation, the Associated Press has published an article revealing the relationship between the Agency and the NYPD in the past ten years.

Work have been done on two main levels. First, a veteran CIA officer was assigned to be in charge of training a police officer who would put into practice new espionage techniques inside the police units. This action allowed the CIA to influence and reorient NYPD towards serving intelligence instead of fulfilling its normal duty as a law enforcement institution.

Secondly, a senior CIA officer was sent to work as a clandestine operative inside the police headquarters, with the main goal of supervising and watching the progression of the project. Bookstores, cafes, bars and nightclubs are some of the public places targeted by the program which consisted of citizens’ surveillance, also referred to in the AP report as “human mapping.”

The same reports said that the NYPD has sent “rakers” into minority neighborhoods to spy and gather data. Police have also used informants, referred to as “mosque crawlers,” to report on religious sermons or gatherings in mosques, even in the absence of suspicious activity.

In his comments on the issue, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, admitted that NYPD is working with the CIA, but defended its practices saying, “If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement and I think they follow the law. We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there.”

In a response to the report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organization, asked the Justice Department for an investigation into the case. CAIR attorney, Gadeir Abbas, believes that “the first amendment protects our right to associate freely with one another.”

“An investigation of a community [rather than of a crime or a particular person] unlawfully chills the rights of persons within that community. Furthermore, the Establishment Clause requires NYPD to maintain neutrality between all religions. Their intelligence unit appears to be failing to maintain that neutrality by institutionalizing suspicion of all things Islamic,” Abbas said.

Police involvement in CIA activities has blurred the lines of domestic and foreign affairs as well as the limits between local and federal jurisdiction.

Some say that the CIA’s dependence on the help of the NYPD is because of the the agency’s inexperience dealing with a domestic environment. The lack of diversity among the CIA’s personnel may also play into its inability to conduct operations independent of the police department. The NYPD has both features; a direct contact with citizens, as well as a culturally and linguistically diverse staff that more easily blends into the community.

Others are questioning why the CIA doesn’t try collaborating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instead of NYPD. Whatever the reason, the issues surrounding privacy and freedom is not only found in the U.S. Many Arabs are currently fighting against regimes, where spying on citizens is routine. Meanwhile, many New Yorkers are unaware of the spying efforts of the CIA and police department.

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Syria should back away from its violent crackdown on protesters and enter talks with the opponents, Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a live interview taken in early September in Teheran with Radiotelevisao Portuguesa. “There should be talks” between the Syrian government and its opponents, he added, stressing the importance of dialogue in the matter.

“A military solution is never the right solution”, the Iranian leader said, according to the Portuguese translation of his comments. “We believe that freedom and justice and respect for others are the rights of all nations. All governments have to recognize these rights,” he said. “Problems have to be dealt with through dialogue.”

Ahmadinejad’s comments come after similar comments made by Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who said one month earlier that the Syrian president should answer the legitimate demands of his people. However, Salehi also cautioned that a “power vacuum” in Syria could have “unprecedented repercussions” for the entire region.

“Other countries in the region can help the Syrian government and people to talk to each other with a view to resolving their differences and introducing the reforms that are needed,” Ahmadinejad said. Iran, Damascus chief ally, has blamed nations such as the United States and Israel for instigating long-term protests in Syria, while U. S. and other nations have accused Iran of helping Assad crush the uprisings afflicting the country.

“Other countries have no right to interfere in…domestic discussions,” Ahmadinejad concluded, citing NATO’s controversial intervention in Libya in early 2011 as an example of misguided actions. The ongoing Syrian conflict started in January 2011 with a series of protests that escalated to a violent uprising by the end of March.

The demands of the protesters include for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, for a pluriparty system which would allow other political systems besides the ruling Baath Party, equal rights for Syria’s religious and ethnic groups, as well as broad political freedom, such as freedom of speech, press and assembly.

As protests intensified, the Syrian government used tanks and snipers to force civilians off streets. So far, more than 3,000 protesters have been killed and many more injured, tortured or detained. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Syrian government has made several concessions, but protesters are not satisfied and demand for more meaningful reforms.

Crackdowns on protesters intensified as time went by, causing international reactions. European Union, Arab League, the Secretary-General of the United Nations and many Western governments expressed their disapproval of the Syrian government’s response to the protests.

Many condemned the violence which has not stopped since the beginning of the uprising while showing support for the protesters’ right to freedom of speech.
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On Friday, Interpol issued arrest warrants for Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam as well as his intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi. And it is not just international forces who want the elusive former leader behind bars.

The new rulers in Libya has according to Huffington Post dedicated a special unit to the hunt of Gaddafi — using phone tapping, satellite images and witness accounts to pinpoint his position. The Libyan dictator went underground after Aug 21 when rebels swept into Tripoli but has not been seen in public for several months ahead of this event.

His disappearance is a major issue to Libyans and many western leaders and rumors of his whereabouts have put him on several locations both in and outside the country. Gaddafi himself claims to remain in Libya through audio broadcast and seems unwilling to face defeat.

Meanwhile, anti-Gaddafi forces are rounding up their former political opponents — most importantly the former Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, according to Sky News. Khaled Kaim was one of the faces of Gaddafi’s regime and also one of those who denied that Arab Spring was sweeping through the people of Libya, calling the uprising the work of islamists and terrorists.

Kaim is now staying at a high security detention centre in Tripoli where he continues to refuse realities Kaim told Sky News reporter Lisa Holland that he had received a death threat from someone inside the regime shortly before it collapsed because “he was pulling away from them.”

He insisted that he was simply a mouthpiece to the Colonel: “Making a press conference doesn’t mean that you’re saying your own opinion,” he explained While former government strongmen try to salvage their political careers, the anti-Gaddafi fighters continue their operation to find the dictator.

One fighter participated in a raid last week where they believed Gaddafi was staying. The fighter, who spoke to The Huffington Post under the condition of anonymity, said that Gaddafi had “escaped less than an hour before the raid through a secret tunnel. Computers were on and cups of tea were still warm.”

NATO, who has plenty of intelligence collection measures in the area were suggested as a possible partner to the Libyan tracking mission. However, both NATO and Libyan officials has declined that the alliance will make a difference in the hunt for Gaddafi. Still, some of the rebel’s allies continue to contribute where they can.

For example, reports say that small CIA teams, as well as a number of British and French special operation advisors, are prepared to help the former rebels in their search. When or if Gaddafi is caught, the International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to see the former leader held accountable “for the serious criminal charges that have been brought against him.”

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People of the Arab world have started to envisage a society that is not designed to suppress the voice of the people.

The importance of democracy has really dawned on the people of Syria, which shows that they have picked up something which already set ablaze many Arab states this year. The wave of disturbances between state and citizens that rocketed in Tunisia and Egypt arrived in Syria, leading to the death of hundreds of people.

This crisis at the outset is much deeper in meaning. It represents how the state has ignored the will of its citizens and deceived its people under President Bashar-Al Assad, who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorships from his father Hafez-Al-Assad.

Economic stagnation and ancient autocrats are just a few of the grievances that are responsible for the upheaval currently threatening to sweep away the ruling regime. Decades of repression and in some instances economic sluggishness has resulted in viole”nt disruption of political, social and economic life in the general Middle East.

What is needed is a series of political and economic reforms that would foster economic growth. Furthermore, it calls for recognition and granting of basic rights to people to protest and bring about change.

Political liberty in terms of rule of law, more education, a free press and liberation of women is required for every state to lead a peaceful life. Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics on Economic development, said:

“Development has to more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and freedoms we enjoy.”

People were shouting houriye, houriye (freedom, freedom), and it represents the fact that people realized that their political system is not really reflecting their views.

The relationship between the state and its people had been devastated. According to Economics, a newspaper, “the media which focused on the apparent aspect of the crises (filmed or to produce reports describing the events in the street) have not paid attention to socio-conomic, demographic or political aspects of Syrian society”.

The Syrian society disregarded the existence of more than one political party to oppose the Baath Party until recently. But recent violent protest clearly reveals frustration and state of unease for the people led under pressure to bring in new law that now permits the creation of new political parties along-side the ruling Baath Party.

The key demand of the protest is the liberation of the political system and freedom to form political parties that had been restrained by article 8 of the Syrian constitution so far.

Existence of single political party shows a political monopoly in the country, in economic theory birth or existence of monopoly is regretted or hindered by law similarly in politics it is protest for a change that eventually leads to more just society.

Now the attitude of the Syrian government has been softened since the cabinet approved the multi party bill. Other political party can now participate in elections. Normalcy and prosperity should not be unreachable in the future.

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Hundreds of Syrians have already fled their country and human rights groups say more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in the Syrian conflict since mid-March. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a press conference last week: “It’s very clear to us that unless the Syrian forces immediately end their attacks and their provocations that are not only affecting their own citizens but endangering the potential of border clashes then we’re going to see an escalation of conflict in the area.” At last Friday’s prayers, at least 20 civilians were shot by security forces and hundreds were arrested in the gathered protests. The government have express willingness to reform, but will the people accept the compromise?

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Sasha Ghosh-Siminoff, a journalist and Master graduate in Middle East Politics with a specialty in the levant region. We spoke about his stay in the Syrian town of Aleppo between January and April 18, 2011, which collided with the outbreak of the conflict. He gave us his analysis of the situation.

How was the daily situation for you during your stay?

When I say we (from the CET Academic Program) were being monitored and watched, it wasn’t very overt but we knew that being Americans, especially being foreigners in Syria, was gonna come par with the program so we were just aware of it. But there was really no problem, I had numerous friends who were interested in human rights and they went freely back and forth to the Palestinian refugee camps [...] so for the first six to eight weeks, there were really no problems.

How do you keep up to date with the situation in the country now?

It’s certainly been difficult. Before I left, as the situation was getting worse, I spoke with a little number of my friends and we all exchanged emails, phone numbers everything [...] they all were very upset because we left very abruptly. Friendship in Syria is a very deep thing [...] so the fact that we had to leave so quickly was really hard on them but [...] I keep up to date with them, they email me, they let me know what’s going on. It’s getting more and more tricky, I have a number of friends who do participate in protests and they have right now ten different sim cards for their mobile phones, they change them a lot. Sometimes they don’t feel confident that they can send email without being tracked so, it’s become more difficult.

How would you define the initial motivation behind the protest?

It’s an interesting question, I think in many ways without the incident that occurred in Daraa, many of these things may or may no have come to light. Hindsight of course is 20/20 but the incident in Daraa that sparked all of this was a group of kids, very young people, who had written some graffiti – slogans they had heard and picked up from the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. [...] You know, family is important and the fact that the security services arrested those people I think was extremely culturally tone-deaf, and I think it really sparked for a lot of people – it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There’s been a lot of other incidence, arbitrary arrest, like I discussed in an op-ed piece in the Guardian [...] These kinds of things do happen, they’re not as common as they were under Hafez al-Assad, things did get better under his son but the pressure had been building. To give you another example, me and some friend would be sitting in a cafe and a friend would look to me and say ‘we need to leave and move somewhere else’ and I’d say ‘why?’ and he’s like ‘there’s security services watching us and I’m worried about us having an open conversation without problems’ so we would move – little things like that, and just living in that kind of atmosphere, I think, takes a toll after a while.

In your opinion, what keeps Assad in position?

I think it’s interesting to note a few things, one is that when Bashar al-Assad came to power, he’d promised numerous reforms and he had promised to do away with a lot of the old guard that had supported Hafez al-Assad, his father. And he did change a lot of those positions, [...] but the family dynamic of the al-Assad family is very complicated. For example, there are reports of the fact that for one, his older brother is in charge of the fourth mechanized devision which has been the division of the army they’ve been using to suppress the protest in Daraa especially and to occupy several cities and his brother-in-law, I believe, is in charge of the internal security service. I don’t have [all the] information, I’m not sure what kind of conversation they’re having but I certainly feel that it’s no longer just Bashar’s decision in terms of how to deal with the protests.

Do you think it will come to an intervention?

It’s a good question, I believe that intervention would be a very difficult prospect because of Syria’s position in the middle east, it’s relationship with Iran, it’s relationship with Lebanon and of course the negotiations that need to occur between Israel and Syria to have a sustainable peace between those two countries. Intervention of the kind we see in Libya; I don’t know if that’s possible or not and I’m not sure it would be in anyone’s interest to do that. I think the international community would prefer the Syrians to do this themselves. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both made statements saying that they condemn the killing, [...] that the Syrian government should allow for protest to occur and that significant reforms need to occur. The issue of reform has interestingly enough been echoed by the prime minister of Turkey and Turkey does have a good relationship with Syrian government so that was significant [but] I don’t know if anyone’s going be willing to intervene in the way that we’ve seen so far in Libya.

In the greater Middle East, what does it mean for the future structure of the region that Arab Spring is sweeping through former authoritarian states?

I think it’s clear that autocratic rule in the Middle East failed in numerous ways and in places like Syria, for the longest time they would use Israel as a foil to say ‘we have these issues and these problems internally but we have this greater enemy of Israel that’s always there so we need to put aside our wants and wished domestically to deal with the threat of Israel’. But I think, at a certain point, that sort of discussion loses weight and domestically speaking, especially in places like Syria, there’s so many other concerns, so many other issues that need to be addressed and it’s all just coming out. I think it’s the same thing in Egypt and Tunisia and in Yemen that there’s a certain amount of corruption, there’s a lot of people – they work day and night and barely get by and that combined with the kind of repressive tactics these autocrats use to stay in power, I think it’s just too much.  Tunisia was very symbolic in the sense that they showed the rest of the Arab world ‘this is possible, you can do this, if we can do this you can do this’. And I think, for many people that was very striking and I think, all over the Middle East and North Africa [people] really want reform and change and I think it’s a good thing. I’m really excited that this is a movement that’s come from within, it’s not external, these are movements being done by people there and it’s from them and I think, because it is from them that, I think there’s hope, definitely hope.

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In the much-anticipated speech to the state department, President Obama stated that a “mutually agreed swaps” would help create a “viable Palestine, and secure Israel.” He later insisted in an interview with the BBC that the ‘1967 border’ had to be the basis for negotiations on a Palestinian State.

Within a day of the President’s speech, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his governments displeasure about Obama’s views. According to Netanyahu, the borders before the 1967 Middle East conflict were “indefensible”, considering that Israel has constructed an extensive network of settlements beyond those lines. An estimated 300,000 Israelis live in the settlements of the West bank, even though these are illegal under international law, a fact which Israel disputes.

In Thursday’s speech, Mr Obama spoke about the Arab Spring and what this meant for US role in the region. The American president praised the recent developments stating “through the moral force of non-violence, the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplish in decades.” He acknowledged that the rest of the world had to be patient because change would take years to be constructively implemented. Obama also spoke about the future of US policy to the Middle East, and went into a murky description of the link between US interest and the hopes and desired of the region. When he reached the issue of the continuous conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territory, the President said “The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.”

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

The Israeli Prime Minister, who is due to meet President Obama for talk at the White House Friday, said that the 1967 border would leave major Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria outside Israeli territory. In a statement, the Prime Minister rejected the idea and said “the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of the viability of the one and only Jewish state.”

In the statement, Netanyahu called on Mr Obama to reaffirm commitments made to Israel in 2004.

The speech to the state department was far less inspirational than that in Cairo two years ago, according to Jon Leyne of the BBC. Mr Obama summed up an encouraging and poised, yet awkwardly restrained US position towards the flood of democratic momentum in the Middle East and North African region. He said that in the past, the US had accepted the status quo but has now seen a chance to pursue the world as it should be.

Observers, however, are skeptical. How does the President intend to carry out his ideas for a ‘better’ regional situation? With Netanyahu’s blunt rejection of the 1967 borders in what could have been a constructive move in the otherwise stoic conflict, negotiations could already be deterred from moving forward.

The greater realisation is that the Arab Spring could indicate the decline of American influence in the region. As the President himself acknowledged, it was not the US who pushed the people into the street, and his government will have to accept that not all of the nations in revolt will choose to follow the form of democracy that America promotes.

Obama’s best guess is that Israel eventually will soften up on their demands and their deep-rooted objections to a Palestinian state. The unity deal signed between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah earlier this month – along with Mahmoud Abbas’ call for UN recognition – could provide the needed international pressure to revive talks between the two authorities. Until then, Obama can only hope he’s on the right side of history.

Image provided by The National Academy of Sciences

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The Israeli military has confirmed on Wednesday that Col Vadim Leiderman, military attache in Russia, was expelled by the Russian government on accusations of espionage. According to the BBC, a joint statement by Israel’s defense ministry and the military spokesman’s office read that “The [Israeli Defense Forces] military attache and ministry of defense representative in Russia, an IDF colonel, was detained for investigation last week by Russian authorities on suspicion of spying.”

The Russian government have yet to confirm the accusations but the Israeli army, which have investigated the claims, believe they are unfounded. Israeli media reported that Col Leiderman had been taken into detention 10 days ago and questioned on suspicion of espionage but after claiming diplomatic immunity, the IDF colonel was given 48 hours to leave the country. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz told the BBC that there had been a gagging order on the matter until Wednesday evening.

Israel is said to be going through a turbulent time amid the Arab spring and chilly relations with the country’s number one ally, the US. This week, the diplomatic wheels will once more start turning over the question of the Palestinian State as the Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu is flying to Washington in a pre-empted effort to contain the ‘diplomatic tsunami’ expected to hit Israel in September. On Tuesday, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the international community to recognize a Palestinian State at the UN Assembly this autumn, stating in an opinion piece from the New York Times that Palestinians “cannot wait indefinitely” for a state of their own.

“Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one,” the Palestinian leader explained. When the UN General Assembly meets in September, their recognition would enable Palestine to negotiate “from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is military occupied by another [...] and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us,” he added.

According to The Guardian, the ice between Israel and their long-time ally has been the result of President Obama and his policy of reaching out to Arab and Muslim communities around the world. Netanyahu and his government has viewed this move as “selling Israel out”, a situation which has left the Jewish state troubled by what the future may bring.

Besides worrying about regional revolt, the crumpling support of Arab allies and the development of neighboring nuclear programs – Israel’s latest concern regarding Russia’s nuclear cooperation with Iran and arms sales to Syria could have resulted in their defense representative poking his nose a little too deep into the Russian ‘borcsh’.

The Israeli military has states that “thorough investigation” has cleared colonel Leiderman of passing sensitive information to Israel. So far, Moscow has made no official statement.

Image provided by p-and-h

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