Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France. (Ed. note: Earlier this month, Ali wrote a guest post on dictatorship in Tunisia and Egypt. You can find it here. — Michael Stickings) ********** Started with the match of a Tunisian who aspired for more, a revolutionary wildfire burns near and far from his resting place. We have already witnessed...

UPDATE: The Department of Justice has posted an extensive press release at their web site with additional details on yesterday’s arrest of Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari. These are some of the highlights: Aldawsari is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Lubbock at 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning. Aldawsari, who was lawfully admitted into the United States in 2008 on a student visa and is enrolled...

To all earthquake survivors of Christchurch and surrounds, hang in there… “we are sending in the linebacker angels”… Below this is the Letter to New Zealanders containing Post-Trauma Recovery Tenets… and here is this little prayer for your best possible health and strength from someone you know well… the kiwi. The Kiwi, which is a New Zealand bird of time-honored rank, is...

Say what you will about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks—and plenty has been said about them. Because of them a window has been opened on foreign relations in an age of international intrigue, conflict, terrorism and open warfare. We may not like how that window got opened; we may or may not like what we see through that open window and we may be offended by the fetor entering our home through that open window,...

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is trying to keep up with the pace of events in the Middle East, marveling at the speed at which the dominoes of dictatorship are falling, and wondering why all this is happening NOW. Of course, answers to questions like that are never singular, but one that a number of commentators have been pointing to has to do with the way dictators hold on to power in the first...

Justin Bieber IS inane. It’s hard to tell whether that’s a chronological rather than a congenital problem (most 16-year-olds, after all, don’t have it all figured out just yet), but you don’t have to employ selective quotation from an article you probably haven’t even read to make the point that reasonably intelligent and well-informed adults should not be looking to teen rock idols...

One can always count on seeing some very exciting and spirited debates at The Moderate Voice, whether the subject or issue is religion, politics, culture, war, gender issues, our military, women in combat—or just plain principle and individual rights. Well this one has just about a little bit of “all of the above” and I am curious as to how the debate will go. Readers may remember that, back in 2001,...

Are the ongoing uprisings in the Muslim world due to ‘weariness’ with the materialism of the West, led by the U.S.? To judge from the above photo, at least, it isn’t only materialism making Iranians ‘weary.’ In this latest explanation for the Muslim revolution from Tehran, Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reports that the supreme leader has once again congratulated...

Fat chance.

In the past, has China resisted meddling in the internal affairs of weaker nations – and is it time for Beijing to turn over a new leaf? According to this editorial from China’s state-controlled Global Times, while China has in the past followed a course of non-interference with the domestic affairs of other states, the ongoing series of uprisings in the Middle East may call for a whole new strategy. The...

What can we expect from the uprisings that have suddenly erupted in Muslim lands? Highlighting the confusion over Egypt, La Jornada columnist Jose Steinsleger, who appears to be a confounded, left-wing revolutionary from Latin America, writes that whatever the risk that their dreams may be thwarted – he sides with the young people who have faced down a tyrant. For Mexico’s La Jornada, columnist...

After having heard and read ad nauseam criticism from the far-right neocons on the handling—or “non-handling”—of the recent Egypt crisis by the Obama administration, I braced myself for additional piling on by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a recent Washington Post opinion piece. However, it turned out to be one of the most fair and balanced opinion pieces on this subject by...

Is it wrong for President Obama to support India’s bid for a U.N. Security Council Seat, while appearing to oppose Brazil’s? For the newspaper Estadao, Brazil’s former ambassador to the United States, Roberto Abdenur, insists that Washington take another look at Brazil’s qualifications, and suggests that sidelining Brazil for opposing U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran would be...

It’s Friday evening, the end of a long week and in some ambiences it’s happy hour time: half price beer, half-price something stronger. Since I am writing this, I’ll forsake my beer for now. Quite a sacrifice, since—as you may have noticed if you read my posts—I love beer. As I love Dutch beer, especially Heineken and Amstel Light, one might deduce that I acquired the taste while living in...

Is Washington considering direct intervention in Mexico, after the murder of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent? Writing for Mexico’s Excelsior, Attorney Juan Carlos Sánchez Magallan warns his readers that under no circumstances must U.S. troops be permitted to enter Mexican territory – and that Mexican officials should come clean about the how they will end a crime war that has...

Reuters reports that the Baghdad city government wants the United States to apologize and pay $1 billion for the damage done to the city by blast walls it erected and by our troops’ Humvees during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The city’s government said in a statement: The U.S. forces changed this beautiful city to a camp in an ugly and destructive way, which reflected deliberate ignorance and carelessness...

Can Islam and democracy exists side by side? Columnist K. Selim of Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran contests the notion that a free election can happen ‘only once’ in Arab countries, and warns those who have led uprisings in Egypt and Algeria that the eyes of the world are upon them – and most are against them. For Le Quotidien d’Oran, K. Selim writes in part: “Bush or bin Laden:...

Yes, that’s exactly what the British celebrity woman Jemima Khan, former wife of the world’s legendary cricketer Imran Khan, has to say. All governments lie at some time or the other. But when the web of lies becomes untenable and threaten world peace and financial security, then the alarm bells are set off. Jemima Khan in this video (http://bit.ly/dTDFaV) states: “Corruption, war crimes and...

In “The Iraqi Phoenix Rises Again,” I described how the once proud and powerful Iraqi Air Force (IqAF)—at one time the sixth largest air force in the world—was decimated as a result of both the 1991 “Persian Gulf War” (Operation Desert Storm) and Saddam Hussein’s desperate concealing, disassembling and “stashing abroad” of its remaining aircraft before the 2003 U.S. invasion...

Several bloggers on the right are criticizing Nir Rosen for engaging in an extended Twitter exchange trivializing and making fun of what happened to Lara Logan. I’m going to single out Jim Geraghty’s comments for quoting, because I feel that he makes the point without engaging in partisan name-calling or ad hominem attacks:

How many of us remember our first young love? Probably quite a few. However, if that first romance occurred some 70 years ago, how many would still remember it well enough and still cherish it deeply enough to write a screenplay for a movie celebrating such love? That is exactly what 90-year-old, World War II veteran John Tschirhart has been dedicating virtually every waking hour of his life to for the last...

One of the more ironic experiences in modern journalism is to translate criticism of the American media from China’s state-controlled version. This article from China’s state-run Nan Fang Daily takes a a few digs at America’s “free press” by examining the recent controversy surrounding the firing of commentator Juan Williams by publicly-funded National Public Radio and his resulting...

To use his words, they’re “not pretty” (emphasis is mine):

If there’s anyone who has no business lecturing anyone about peaceful regime change, it’s Max Boot. Here he is, oozing condescension as he tells Egyptians that “the tweet is mightier than the sword” (emphasis is mine):

President Obama has just given his reaction to the momentous and fast-moving events in Egypt. Some of his comments: There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history…The people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard… Egypt will never be the same…This is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It is the beginning…Egyptians have made it clear that...