A Surge of People Power in the Middle East

From his weekly perch at CNN, Fareed Zakaria speculated recently whether George Bush could take credit for the events that were unfolding in Tunisia, whether this was the late fruit of the neoconservative project to bring "democracy" to the Middle East. It is quite...

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Egypt: Battle of the Narratives

The Egyptian events seem, on the face of it, fairly straightforward: a tyrant in office for 30 years, propped up by fulsome US support and a very efficient secret police apparatus, faces a full-scale revolution by his brutalized subjects, who are – finally!...

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Litany of Abuses Fueled Protesters’ Fury

In Egypt, where protesters continued to demonstrate Tuesday for the eighth day in a row, the use of torture by law enforcement officials over the past two decades has contributed to the growing unrest, rights groups say. In a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW),...

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Obama Looking Beyond Mubarak

With new anti-government demonstrations expected in Cairo and other Egyptian cities Tuesday, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama appears to have concluded that the 29-year reign of President Hosni Mubarak is coming to an end. But it hopes to avoid...

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Let My People Go

As I write this, the Egyptian state seemingly totters on the brink of collapse. One last push from what appears to be a genuine, spontaneous popular uprising may be all it takes to send “president for life” Hosni Mubarak into exile or to a wall with (perhaps) a...

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Making Mahem [sic]

In his State of the Union address, President Obama lauded two fruits that fell from the tree of government support for the basic research of “cutting-edge scientists and inventors”: the Internet and GPS. Though he didn't mention it, that wasn't just any old...

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Winners and Losers From a Pharaoh’s Fall

Among the biggest losers of the Egyptian uprising are, first, the Mubaraks, who are finished, and, next, the United States and Israel. Hosni Mubarak will be out by year's end, if not the end of this month, or week. He will not run again and will not be succeeded by...

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