As Spain’s prime minister announced deep austerity cuts Wednesday in order to secure funds from the European Union to bail out Spain’s failing banks, the people of Spain have taken to the streets once again for what they call “Real Democracy Now.” This comes a week after the government announced it was launching a criminal investigation into the former CEO of Spain’s fourth-largest bank, Bankia. Rodrigo Rato is no small fish: Before running Bankia he was head of the International Monetary Fund. What the U.S. media don’t tell you is that this official government investigation was initiated by grass-roots action.

The Occupy movement in Spain is called M-15, for the day it began, May 15, 2011. I met with one of the key organizers in Madrid last week on the day the Rato investigation was announced. He smiled, and said, “Something is starting to happen.” The organizer, Stephane Grueso, is an activist filmmaker who is making a documentary about the May 15 movement. He is a talented professional, but, like 25 percent of the Spanish population, he is unemployed: “We didn’t like what we were seeing, where we were going. We felt we were losing our democracy, we were losing our country, we were losing our way of life. ... We had one slogan: ‘Democracia real YA!’—we want a ‘real democracy, now!’ Fifty people stayed overnight in Puerta del Sol, this public square. And then the police tried to take us out, and so we came back. And then this thing began to multiply in other cities in Spain. In three, four days’ time, we were like tens of thousands of people in dozens of cities in Spain, camped in the middle of the city—a little bit like we ...

One of the consequences of the Occupy movement’s emergence onto the scene over the last nine months is the escalating disagreement about the role of various strands of nonviolence and nonviolent action in the struggle. In the process, misconceptions about nonviolent strategy are being unfortunately perpetuated by earnest adherents of principled nonviolence and require correction. The phenomenon of nonviolent action is already misunderstood in most media. To see it further distorted by our own colleagues is disheartening.

In an article called “How to Sustain a Revolution” that appeared on Truthoutseveral months ago, Stephanie Van Hook made an eloquent case for personal transformation in the context of nonviolent struggle. The essence of her argument was that acting nonviolently is not enough to sustain a people-powered revolution, and that a person must have nonviolent intentions and the willingness and ability to engage in an internal discipline of personal nonviolence if the struggle is to be truly won. On this point, I don’t have any serious disagreement. While I am not sure I would make the same case that nonviolent success requires this level of individual transformation prior to the waging of the struggle, Van Hook’s argument is similar enough to the case I would make — that nonviolent success requires genuine appreciation of one’s own (and thus our collective) power. I am someone who does not align solely with one camp of nonviolence or nonviolent action, and am someone who believes that ...

Are we ready for a new economy?

And a new politics?

First, some definitions. I think we can define the new economy as one where the overriding purpose of economic life is to sustain and to strengthen People, Place, and Planet, and is no longer to grow Profit, Product (as in gross domestic), and Power.

And a new politics? No surprises here. A new politics in America is one that replaces today’s creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy with true popular sovereignty.

Well, then, let’s explore how we can begin the process of transformation to a new economy and a new politics. This afternoon, I want to offer 10 steps we can take now that would start us on our journey. Time is short, so here they are.

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As angry demonstrators gathered once again in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest what many are calling a “soft coup” by the military, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that Washington still expects “a full transfer or power to a democratically elected civilian government” in Egypt.

“There can be no going back on the democratic transition called for by the Egyptian people,” Clinton said in reaction to the news that the Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court had dissolved the country’s elected parliament on the eve of presidential elections this weekend.

“Now, ultimately, it is up to the Egyptian people to determine their own future, and we expect that this weekend’s presidential election will be held in an atmosphere that is conducive to being peaceful, fair, and free.”

But a number of Egypt experts here said the latest moves by both the court and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed all legislative powers following the court’s decision, have thrown the entire “transition” process into grave doubt and should prompt the administration of President Barack Obama to reassess its expectations and its policy.

“The United States should be examining the actions of the SCAF very carefully and keep in reserve the option of suspending military assistance should the SCAF not take the action it should in this situation,” said Michelle Dunne, the head of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council and co-chair of the Egypt Working Group, an ad hoc task force of Middle East specialists who advised the White House on Egypt policy over the past 18 months.

“The parliament was quite active and enjoyed a lot of popular support,” she told IPS. “Its dissolution creates a highly unstable atmosphere in which the final round of the presidential election will ...

May 17 marked Women Occupying Wall Street’s (WOW) First Feminist General Assembly in New York, along with similar assemblies in Chicago and other Occupy sites nationwide. It also happened to be my 30th birthday. Everyone knows that when you pass to a new decade, there is a comfort in nostalgia — 30 is no exception — and while Petaluma, Ca., had no such meeting, I held a GA of one in which I examined the relationship between my commitment to nonviolence and my feminism.

I was, after all, a self-identified feminist long before I was a nonviolent activist and educator, and I see the two identities as complementary and mutually reinforcing. It’s not surprising: Women’s rights have historically been won through nonviolent methods, although it’s also true that movements for women’s rights and feminism are not entirely the same. The various forms of feminism do not always share a common commitment to nonviolence or even an anti-militarist stance: The fact that women are now being trained to kill other women in the military is seen by some as a “victory” for women’s rights. Yet the separation between nonviolence and feminism feels inauthentic to me. This comes not from any essentialist belief about femininity in general, but because we are more aware today that violence is inequality, and, as the Second Wave feminists insisted, there is no such thing as equality for some.

Peace educator Betty Reardon, who attended the feminist GA in New York, struck a cautious note in an email to me:

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The failed effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is widely seen as a crisis for the labor movement, and a pivotal moment in the 2012 U.S. presidential-election season. Walker launched a controversial effort to roll back the power of Wisconsin’s public employee unions, and the unions pushed back, aided by strong, grass-roots solidarity from many sectors. This week, the unions lost. Central to Walker’s win was a massive infusion of campaign cash, saturating the Badger state with months of political advertising. His win signals less a loss for the unions than a loss for our democracy in this post-Citizens United era, when elections can be bought with the help of a few billionaires.

In February 2011, the newly elected Walker, a former Milwaukee county executive, rolled out a plan to strip public employees of their collective-bargaining rights, a platform he had not run on.  The backlash was historic. Tens of thousands marched on the Wisconsin Capitol, eventually occupying it. Walker threatened to call out the National Guard. The numbers grew. Despite Walker’s strategy to “divide and conquer” the unions (a phrase he was overheard saying in a recorded conversation with a billionaire donor), the police and firefighters unions, whose bargaining rights he had strategically left intact, came out in support of the occupation. Across the world, the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt was in full swing, with signs in English and Arabic expressing solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin.

The demands for workers rights were powerful and sustained. The momentum surged toward a demand to ...

Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from Egypt, where protests erupted last night after final results were announced in the country’s first-ever competitive presidential election. The top two candidates in the first round of the race are Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a popular uprising 15 months ago. "[Shafik] speaks the language of Mubarak’s regime. And what that means is the retention of broad discretionary powers given to the executive and given to security forces, a very strong role for security agency involvement, whether the intelligence services or Ministry of Interior security agencies, to ensure stability and control over protests, which, as far as he is concerned, are the source of instability," says Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch. Morsi and Shafik will face each other in a runoff vote set to begin June 16. Special thanks to Democracy Now! video producer Hany Massoud.

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Protests erupted in Egypt last night after final results were announced in the country’s first-ever competitive presidential election. The top two candidates in the first round of the race are Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under Hosni Mubarak who was ousted in a popular uprising 15 months ago. Morsi and Shafik will face each other in a runoff ...

Voters are heading to the polls for the second day in Egypt’s first competitive presidential election following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak 15 months ago. The first day of voting saw numerous reports of minor violations, but was largely hailed as free of fraud and violence. Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister and now a leading candidate, was swarmed by protesters outside his polling station who hurled shoes and debris at him. Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous and videographer Hany Massoud spent the day traveling to polling stations around Cairo speaking to voters about their choices for president and their concerns in the election.

For more than a year now, the best minds in Washington have assured me (and you) that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is about to fall. These assurances are always delivered with great confidence, winks and nods oozing gravitas, and yet the wispy Assad, an ophthalmologist masquerading as a despot, hangs on, slaughtering his own people, destroying and despoiling whole neighborhoods, calling the bluff of the Arab League, the Turks and even the European Union, which just the other day — in a measure apparently intended to give Assad a fatal case of the giggles — banned his wife from shopping on the Continent. Sherman was right: War is hell.

Having sheathed his credit card, Assad pressed on with his war that has cost as many as 10,000 lives, produced well over 100,000 refugees, and brought large-scale misery to Syria. But it has also lifted “the veil of fear” — a useful phrase coined by former assistant secretary of state James P. Rubin. He used it to refer to the once-widespread belief that the Assad were invincible and that to challenge them would bring the most horrendous consequences. This is no longer the case. A great many people have been challenging them for some time now. The costs have been great, but the insurrection goes on nonetheless. The veil has been shredded.

What has also been shredded is the naive belief that Assad would fall in Syria as did Hosni in Egypt and wind up, to the delight of the vengeful, in a defendant’s cage. But Mubarak either would not or could not use unrestrained force against his own people. Assad did, and will ...

Confronted with popular protest, the country's unelected rulers have doubled down on repression, jailing peaceful activists and killing dozens of civilians who have the gall to exercise their rights. Those who state security forces haven't killed for demanding democracy have been tear-gassed and brought before the perverted justice of a military court, even as the ruling clique promises the world and its red-eyed subjects democratic reform. Eventually.

Were it Syria or Iran, the rhetoric from Washington would be stern, aggressive even. But since the repressive ruling clique is the military junta in Egypt, the lectures are timid – and coupled with a handout. Indeed, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just announced, the Obama administration is waiving a legislative requirement that made military assistance to Egypt conditional on its rulers “implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.” This allows the U.S. government to send Egypt's rulers $1.5 billion in taxpayer money, more than 85 percent of which is explicitly set aside for the armed forces.

If one only pays attention to what politicians say, ignoring what they do, this may come as a surprise. President Barack Obama, after all, has voiced support for the Arab Spring. He gave a speech in Cairo full of lofty words about the people of the region's legitimate democratic aspirations. So why would his administration lavish a regime that cracks down on pro-democracy forces with money for weapons?

Simple: for America's weapons makers, there's big money at stake. According to “administration and congressional ...

Sparks flew across the desert sand as Mohammad Omar welded barbed wire to the top of a 16-foot fence that winds its way across the Israeli-Egyptian border.

Against the brown and tan landscape, the gleaming white metal of the fence stands out, an ominous warning to those attempting to cross into Israel.

"We have been working here for several months. By the end of the year we will be finished," Omar said, confirming a timeline that Israel's defense minister had announced earlier.

Concerned about turmoil in Egypt and what Israeli military officials say is a rising threat along the country's southern border, Israel has embarked on building an iron barrier that will stretch nearly 140 miles from the Taba border crossing on the Red Sea north through the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip and the Mediterranean. It will be the largest man-made object in the largely unoccupied desert.

Israeli military officials, providing a tour of the fence this week, said the threat along the country's southern border with Egypt now was "as high as we have seen it."

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Despite strong pressure to reduce the yawning federal deficit, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is asking Congress for a slight increase in funding for the State Department and foreign aid next year.

The administration is requesting a total of some 56 billion dollars in "international affairs" spending for fiscal year (FY) 2013, which begins Oct. 1, according to the budget proposal presented by the administration Monday.

That total is two percent more - or about 1.3 billion dollars - than Congress approved in a 2012 omnibus appropriations bill, but still four percent less than the FY 2010 international affairs budget, the last year in which Democrats held a majority in both houses of Congress.

More than half the increase from last year will be provided by a 770- million-dollar "Middle East Funding Initiative", which is designed to give the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) flexibility in responding to new developments in the so-called "Arab Awakening".

"The notion is we're in a new world," Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides told reporters Monday. "…(T)he idea is to have some flexibility to support everything from Tunisia, to support areas like potentially in Egypt and in areas where things are changing every day, in Syria… the world is evolving as we see it, and we felt it was important to have a pool of money."

On the other hand, U.S. aid to Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union will decline under Obama's proposal. Military and police assistance to Latin American countries - particularly its two biggest beneficiaries, Colombia and Mexico - will also be reduced by roughly 10 percent.

The budget also calls for modest cuts in global health, food aid, and disaster and humanitarian programs, proposals which drew concern from a number of aid groups.

"We understand this is ...

Egyptian investigators filed criminal charges Sunday against at least 40 international civil society workers, reportedly including the son of a U.S. Cabinet secretary, in a controversial case that could cost the ruling generals millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

Nineteen Americans are among the employees of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, referred to trial on charges of involvement in banned activities and receiving foreign funds illegally, according to state media. The other defendants are Egyptians, Serbs, Germans and Arabs from other countries, according to news reports. All of them face a travel ban preventing them from leaving Egypt.

The highly politicized case, which has drawn outrage from Egypt's once-close allies in Washington, shows that the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Force is willing to risk Egypt's annual $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to assert sovereignty and win some points at home, analysts said.

"SCAF wants to demonstrate its anti-American credentials," said Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School who's written extensively on the Egyptian military.

In Egypt, a cross-section of political elites have long resented the NGOs' work here on the belief that they were imposing Western values on a deeply conservative Arab Muslim ...

Egypt has barred at least 10 American and European civil society workers — including the son of a senior Obama administration official — from leaving the country in a sign that the ruling generals are extending their crackdown on foreign pro-democracy groups.

Sam LaHood, the director of the Egyptian program of the Washington-based International Republican Institute and the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, said Thursday that four employees of the institute had been banned from traveling outside Egypt. He learned he was included when he was prevented from leaving via the Cairo airport Saturday.

"It's absolutely an escalation," LaHood said. "It's a de facto detention."

U.S. officials were outraged last month when Egyptian forces raided the Cairo offices of the International Republican Institute and other American and Egyptian civil society organizations in an ongoing campaign to blame the groups for fueling unrest with their "foreign funds." Special forces and prosecutors sealed the offices and carted away computers, cellphones and files. The National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and a German nongovernmental organization were among those raided.

After some members of Congress threatened to push for an end to Egypt's annual $1.3 billion military aid package, most analysts thought the matter would be resolved quickly through diplomatic channels. Egyptian officials promised that the confiscated equipment would be returned and that the groups were in the pipeline for official registration, which the government has withheld for years.

Instead, it appears that the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has no plans to scale back what Egyptian and American nonprofit workers have long described as a campaign to depict them as foreign agents, a dangerous label that already has prompted xenophobic attacks. State media and nightly talk shows portrayed such groups as ...

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the uprisings in Egypt that unseated an authoritarian regime and rekindled the spark of nonviolent resistance around the world.

The mass demonstrations that began on Jan. 25 in Cairo appeared spontaneous, ignited by the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution some weeks before. But according to Srdja Popovic, a seasoned organizer and founder of the 'Centre for Applied NonViolent Action & Strategies' (CANVAS) in Belgrade, that assumption is far from the truth.

A consultancy group for nonviolent resistance movements around the world, CANVAS prides itself on having trained pro-democracy activists from almost 40 countries in nonviolent techniques and strategies.

Members of Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement, a decisive force in bringing down former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, were disciples of the organization, which has been dubbed the 'Revolution Academy'.

In CANVAS workshops, members of April 6 became familiar with forms of peaceful protest, creative provocation measures and practical advice on how to behave in critical situations. They took classes in fundraising and recruitment and gained valuable advice on how to attract new supporters to the movement.

Coupled with the revolutionary fervor that swept across Egypt throughout 2011 and is still visible on the streets today, CANVAS’ training of key young members of the resistance bore fruits of a legendary nature.

"2011 was the worst year for the bad guys ever," said Popovic at a discussion in Berlin entitled, 'Democracy Promotion – Democracy Export – Regime Change?', referring to the many pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East that have come to be known as the Arab Spring.

Popovic easily counts himself as one of the 'good guys', given that he was a driving force behind the Serbian student ...

As ousted political and military leaders in the Middle East continue to seek immunity from war crimes prosecutions, the United Nations and international human rights groups are taking an increasingly tough stance against such legislation in Yemen, Egypt, and possibly in a post-conflict Syria.

"I think it's extremely serious," Jose Luis Diaz, who heads the Amnesty International office at the United Nations, told IPS.

He pointed out that measures providing immunity from prosecution for political or military leaders, who may be responsible for human rights violations, war crimes and/or crimes against humanity, are not only a slap in the face of the victims, but they also eat away at the still fragile gains made to consolidate international justice and fight impunity.

After 33 years of repressive rule, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has agreed to step down from office - following nearly 12 months of street protests - in exchange for immunity from prosecution, under a law passed by parliament last week.

In Egypt, the interim ruling military council is negotiating with the incoming government, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, for immunity from prosecution for military leaders responsible for the killings of peaceful demonstrators last year.

And if beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad relents to international pressure and decides to step down, it is very likely he will seek immunity from prosecution as part of a negotiated deal.

"We came out strongly against the immunity law for Saleh before it was adopted, as we consider it to be in breach of Yemen's obligations under international law to investigate and prosecute human rights violations," Luis Diaz told IPS.

He said that Saleh and others may feel safe from prosecution in Yemen for now, but the immunity law would not necessarily protect them from the courts elsewhere for some of ...

The self-immolation a year ago of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi triggered a wave of popular protests that spread across the Arab world, forcing out dictators in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Now, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, too, seems near the end of his rule.

Together, these movements for change have come to be known as the Arab Spring. But what values are driving these movements, and what kind of change do their adherents want? A series of surveys in the Arab world last summer highlights some significant shifts in public opinion.

In surveys, 84% of Egyptians and 66% of Lebanese regarded democracy and economic prosperity as the Arab Spring’s goal. In both countries, only about 9% believed that these movements aimed to establish an Islamic government.

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For Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, where trend data are available, the Arab Spring reflected a significant shift in people’s values concerning national identity. In 2001, only 8% of Egyptians defined themselves as Egyptians above all, while 81% defined themselves as Muslims. In 2007, the results were roughly the same.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, however, these numbers changed dramatically: those defining themselves as Egyptians rose to 50%, 2% more than those who defined themselves as Muslims.  Among Iraqis, primary self-identification in national terms jumped from 23% of respondents in 2004 to 57% in 2011. Among Saudis, the figure jumped from 17% in 2003 to 46% in 2011, while the share of those claiming a primary Muslim identity dropped from 75% to 44%.

There has also been a shift toward secular politics ...

The so-called "Arab Spring" led U.S. network television evening news coverage during 2011, comprising a total of about 10 percent of all the news coverage provided by the three major commercial networks during 2011, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Indeed, the two top stories - of both foreign and domestic news - for the three networks during the year included the NATO-backed uprising in Libya and the killing of its long-time leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi, and the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and its aftermath.

The Libya story garnered a combined total of nearly 700 minutes of network coverage - or roughly five percent of total coverage - on the evening news programs of ABC, CBS and NBC, while events in Egypt received nearly 500 minutes.

Much less time, however, was devoted to the uprisings in Syria (143 minutes), Bahrain (34 minutes), and Yemen (29 minutes), as well as to general overviews of what some experts have called the "Arab Awakening" (42 minutes) that has been roiling the countries of North Africa and the Middle East since last winter.

"Normally, the networks rev up foreign coverage only when the U.S. is embroiled in military action abroad," noted the report's founder and editor, Andrew Tyndall. "But this year, they provided more international news in which the U.S. troops were not directly involved on the ground than in any other since 1991."

While U.S. airpower was used as part of the NATO campaign to oust Gaddafi, no U.S. ground troops were deployed to Libya.

"Simply put, the type of foreign policy that attracts the most attention is war – the use of military force. Diplomacy is much less newsworthy and leaves room for more of the international angle in covering global hotspots," he told IPS in an email exchange.

The two ...

Poised on the threshold of a new year, I’m again drawn to a metaphor for the challenges and opportunities we face in this urgent time of ours: the crossroads.

Two roads intersect, and now we confront an unavoidable choice. Do we carry on as we always have—or do we, with courage and imagination and verve, make a dramatic course correction?

While it may be too early to definitively rank 2011 as the year of the Great Nonviolent Turning (even greater things may be coming in the new year or in the years that will follow it; or, on the contrary, the passage of time may reframe this period entirely), the events of the past twelve months—from Tunisia to Egypt, from Greece to Spain, from Chile to Jeju Island, from China and Russia to a more or less Occupied America—have signaled a growing determination for a qualitative shift.

Here the symbol of the crossroads is especially apt. Traditionally it signifies, not an arbitrary or simplistic decision (Coke or Pepsi?), but a momentous choice: a turning point, a decisive situation, or a set of life-altering options. The worldwide movement for nonviolent change that has been gathering momentum this year seems to be placing before us such immense choices: Radical economic disparity or sustainable equality? Oligarchy or democracy? Militarized culture or a more nonviolent civil society?

These are not minor alternatives. Real change of this magnitude will require profound structural metamorphosis. This will not appear out of the blue. Nor will it happen merely because we wish it so. Instead, it will depend on movements that derive their power from a deep transformation of personal and social consciousness and identities; a willingness to let go of certain reliable (if debilitating) assumptions about how the world is ordered; and a commitment to face the consequences for taking these still as yet unclear steps for change.

The crossroads in its deepest sense may also be useful ...

Several army soldiers slapped, punched and kicked Mona Seif, hitting her with wooden batons while they dragged her inside the Cabinet Building shortly after they raided Tahrir Square. Minutes earlier she had been told to leave, but she refused unless they released a child she was protecting amid the violence.

"The army officer was infuriated when I told them to release the kid," said Seif, a 25-year-old activist who leads the No Military Trials for Civilians movement. "He ordered the soldiers to take me where they will take the child."

A young army officer in charge of the detention room continuously cursed at the female detainees.

"I am as old as your mother; have some respect for me," said Khadiga, a woman in her 60s who sat on the floor beside Seif.

"The officer exploded when she said that. He kept slapping her over and over until she apologized," said Seif. "I thought they distinguished between younger and older women. They don't."

"It's a planned strategy," she said. "... They want to scare off any girl thinking of joining a ...

The Iraq War may well never be over since its objective of regime change continues to dictate U.S. foreign policy and spawn endless conflicts. Nine years after the second intervention against Baghdad, it is abundantly clear that Saddam Hussein’s prophetic boast about “the mother of all wars” was correct, though not as the fallen dictator had intended.

Iraq fundamentally changed U.S. foreign policy from engagement with adversaries to one of threats and outright intervention aimed at forced exile or assassination of enemy leaders. The roster of dead, or soon-to-be terminated, includes: Saddam Hussein executed by hanging, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Afghanistan’s unofficial emir Osama bin Laden shot at point-blank range, Slobodan Milosevic dying in prison while awaiting a verdict, and Egypt’s deposed chief Hosni Mubarak now on his death-bed. The coercion-prompted heart failure of Vanuatu’s president in Washington went uncelebrated.

Given the track record, it can be assumed the secret White House hit list includes Iran’s boss Mahmoud Ahmadinejed, Syria’s Bashar Assad, Sudan’s Omar Bashir (also under indictment by the international war-crimes court) and North Korean Kim Jong-Il, who died over the weekend from a heart attack. With one misstep, many other impertinent leaders could easily qualify for an assassin’s bullet or a Predator strike: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Russian Vladimir Putin and even reluctant allies like Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari, Afghan’s Hamid Karzai and business partner Hu Jintao in China, just to name a few. Under the new rules instituted by George W. Bush and implemented by Barack Obama, nobody is safe.

The official end of the Iraq War, and soon the Afghan intervention, brings to a close the “war on terrorism.” In its place, the new normality looks to be a global reign of terror. Any ...

During the protests in Tahrir Square in November 2011, Mohamed Ali, age 20, responded to a journalist's query as to why he was there: "We want social justice. Nothing more. That's the least that we deserve."

The first round of the movements took multiple forms across the world—the so-called Arab Spring, the Occupy movements beginning in the United States and then spreading to a large number of countries, Oxi in Greece and the indignados in Spain, the student protests in Chile, and many others.

They were a fantastic success. The degree of success may be measured by an extraordinary article written by Lawrence Summers in the Financial Times on November 21, with the title, "Inequality can no longer be held at bay by the usual ideas." ...

Egypt began its first round of balloting in November, one of the outcomes of the January uprising that ousted the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. This followed the military’s attempt to hold onto power by using draconian measures against renewed protests in Tahrir Square, where military and police killed 40 and injured 2,000. With two more rounds of voting remaining, it is small wonder that many Egyptians are afraid of what is to come. Early indications are that the Muslim Brotherhood will show well in free parliamentary elections, and the more doctrinaire Salafists will claim seats. Debates over the prospects for the Arab Awakening now rage as a result.

After a spellbindingly rapid series of events in the Middle East in the early months of this year, progress seems to have slowed. The liberal spirit that characterized those nonviolent revolutions appears to be dissipating in favor of old rivalries—as well as the specter that new forms of repression will simply replace their predecessors.

What’s happening now in Egypt and Tunisia—to say nothing of Bahrain and Syria—is also bringing back to the fore worn-out arguments claiming that nonviolent struggle works slowly, while violence is quick. Efficient, even.

This kind of argument is often given as a justification for not taking the time to investigate or learn how to fight with nonviolent struggle. I have heard this view advanced by communists, Baathists, Marxists and radical proponents of armed struggle, despite the fact that, until recently, few empirical evaluations have been conducted to determine whether it is actually ...

Women’s broad and persistent participation in the ongoing revolution in Egypt has brought a gruesome new tactic to light—virginity testing.  This form of repression that specifically targets female activists and journalists peaked around March 2011, and under Egypt’s post-Mubarak military leadership, the tactic is on the rise.

Recently, the courageous Samira Ibrahim, a 25-year-old Egyptian human rights activist, has not only publicly exposed the torture she and other women were subjected to, but she is filing a legal case against the Egyptian military for sexual assault. Human Rights Watch and other human rights advocacy and defense organizations have denounced the practice of virginity testing and are helping publicize Samira’s case, including a video testimony by Samira that details her experience.

Certainly, sexual torture is not new in Egypt, and men have been subject to it. Bloggers have helped expose this form of torture for years. In June 2011, the popular writer and lecturer, Mona Eltahawy, helped bring to light the new issue of virginity testing as part of a larger strategy targeting women to discourage them from participating in protest activities. She rightly declares, “If the ‘it wasn’t about gender’ mantra is stuck on repeat so ...

While sitting in a Cairo café just a couple blocks from Tahrir Square a couple months ago, I couldn't help but notice the television in the corner broadcasting the evening news. Traditionally, TV news in Egypt and other Arab countries has consisted of the president (or king) giving a speech, greeting a foreign visitor, visiting a factory, or engaging in some other official function. This evening, however, the news was about a labor strike in Alexandria, relatives of those killed during the February revolution protesting outside the Interior Ministry, and ongoing developments in the pro-democracy struggles in Yemen and Syria.

Nothing could better illustrate the profound change in the Arab world over the past year: It is no longer simply the leaders who were the newsmakers. It is Arab peoples themselves.

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With a milestone election just five days away, Egypt showed no sign Wednesday of recovering from a spasm of violence that's wrecked the campaign period and spiraled into a rebellion that now threatens the ruling military council's grip on the nation.

The bloodshed continued for a fifth consecutive day despite international appeals for calm and limited concessions put forth by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to address demands that it transfer power to a civilian transitional authority immediately.

The council ceded no new ground, however, and nobody could say for sure how to rescue a country whose uprising against authoritarianism had captured the world's imagination and inspired other Arab revolts.

"We're crying out for freedom," said Dr. Noha Mansour, a 50-year-old pediatrician who joined the protest in Cairo. "They're treating the Egyptian people like cows, like we don't understand anything. So we must send a message: This is our revolution and it's not finished yet."

The streets surrounding Cairo's Tahrir Square, sacred ground for the revolutionaries who stood united there against former President Hosni Mubarak 10 months ago, was a battlefield. Thousands of protesters camped in the square Wednesday, forming a human cordon to protect a makeshift field hospital where the injured arrived around the clock from clashes in adjacent side streets.