Americans are more likely to say they disapprove than approve of the U.S. military action in Libya. That represents a shift from three months ago, just after the mission began, when approval exceeded disapproval.

Social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Diggit, live video, texting, bloggers, websites, My Space, and other outlets, now focus on the power of mass protests to rally together to topple governments and spread messages to fellow countrymen, and ultimately tell their story to the rest of the world.

This is AFRICOM's remarkable activity. For the first time, we are seeing a regional command from a foreign country engaging in dialogue with African states. This is an attempt to undertake a certain kind of public diplomacy, to see the idea that at the end of the day, AFRICOM is not a tool for domination.

Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyed Mohammad Hosseini voiced Tehran and Cairo's willingness to strengthen bilateral ties, specially in area of culture. On May 30, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi voiced confidence about the improvement of relations between Iran and Egypt, but meantime said that resuming ties between the two Muslim states needs time and patience.

Sunday's election in Turkey was another reminder of the country’s astonishing rise, which has been one of the most dramatic geopolitical stories of the last decade. Turkey has become not just a safe haven, but a model for what many Arabs would like to see their countries become. Finding a way to stabilize the ever-more-turbulent Middle East is Turkey’s most urgent task.

With a predominantly English speaking subscriber base, it has been hard to view Facebook’s demographics as representative of the Arab consumer. At the same time, no homegrown social network has been successful in appealing to Arabic language Internet users in numbers and the region’s Arabic language social media environment has remained a fragmented one. This is now changing: fast.

Most people in the West were stunned and amazed at the revolts which spread across the Arab World that started in Tunisia in January. Yet the reality was all the ingredients for such uprisings were present and well known...It begs the question as to why the media were part of a collective failure: how come there was no sense in the press of this impending tempest...?

Major events in the Middle East –including tensions between the U.S. and Israel, growing political unrest in many Arab countries, and the death of Osama bin Laden – have had little effect on public attitudes toward the region.