middle east

The sudden onset of the Arab spring and winter has reminded us yet again that America doesn't run the world. And the country must be wary, in the elegant phrasing of the late Reinhold Niebuhr, of its own dreams of managing history.

As I entered the Washington Convention Center exhibit area, I saw many tables that appeared to be staffed by what Jewish organizations worry is an endangered species: interested and engaged young pro-Israel supporters...

There continues to be an ongoing debate about how to regulate the Internet. This conundrum arises from two questions. Is the Internet a platform for old ideas to be transformed in a new medium, or rather a medium for all-together new paradigms of thought?

Though divided by borders, the Arab nations are linked by ancient bonds of language, ethnicity, and faith, all of them tightened by the modern technology of Twitter, Facebook, and Al Jazeera. The pro-democracy protests started in Tunisia and raced east like rows of falling dominos.

A pervading sense of awe seems to be engulfing Arab societies. What is under way in the Arab world is greater than simply revolution in a political or economic sense. It is, in fact, shifting the very self-definition of what it means to be Arab, both individually and collectively.

On January 12, 2009, US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James K. Glassman joined a group of Egyptian political bloggers from the Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo. Is this the “virtual” smoking gun that indicates American collusion in the subsequent ouster of Hosni Mubarak?

March 11, 2011

The Bush administration was designating the Arab language network Al Jazeera the network of Osama Bin Laden. It was almost as if they were warning the American people that watching non-American news was aiding and abetting the enemy.

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