Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The Tunisian Litmus Test Turns Red

February 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Tunisian protestors chant slogans behind barbed wire outside the Interior Ministry in Tunis, on February 7, 2013 during a demonstration against the killing of opposition figure and human rights lawyer Chokri Belaid. Police was deployed in force in the Tunisian capital amid fears the murder of the 48-year-old opposition figure could reignite nationwide violence, as the ruling Islamists broke ranks over how to defuse the crisis. (Photo: KHALIL/AFP/Getty Images)

Wednesday’s shooting of opposition politician Chokri Belaïd was the first assassination of a major political figure in Tunisia’s half-century modern history, according to Human Rights Watch. Unidentified gunmen approached Belaïd outside his home and shot him at point blank range, an act that appears calculated to threaten the progress of Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution,” the two year-old effort to establish a democracy in the small North Africa nation. Tunisia has one of the region’s most peaceful political cultures. While follow-on revolts in the so-called Arab Spring ... Read More

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Nail Polish, Democracy

February 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Wafa Ben Hassine, writing today at Nawaat: The social climate in Tunisia is deteriorating. Many people cannot even find a place to call home, a shelter. Many cannot afford to go to school. Many of the country’s youth remain unemployed (in fact the unemployment rate, according to several sources, has risen in the past year). The cost of living has gone up. For a few weeks, outrage was felt all over the country as many families could not even find a place to buy milk – since now, because of the lack of rule of law, many mafias and trade rings control the flow of certain nutritional ... Read More

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Someone Successfully Explained Egypt’s Politics! (In English)

December 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
MOHAMED-MORSI-WAVE

Below, an excerpt from must-read, Cairo-based Sarah Carr (tagline: "1/2 Egyptian. It's My Country Too You Bastards") who de-mystifies the bogeyman that is the Muslim Brotherhood. Who said international relations has to be complicated and eat-your-vegetables-esque? Every day that passes puts another dent in the legend of this 80-year-old group with its dazzling powers of organization and moderate Islamic vision and familiarity with the Egyptian street. Snort. Morsi is a dull cheating husband who misbehaves and attempts to make amends by offering surprise dinner invitations after he beats his ... Read More

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Twenty Himalayans Have Set Themselves On Fire This Month

November 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

It's hard to mistake a Himalayan November for spring. Frustation in the Chinese-run region of Tibet appears to be making a democracy push this month anyway. It's not clear if it's a series of individual acts, or something organized, but in just the past week five people have set themselves on fire in Tibet, for a total of 20 just this month, most in small if dramatic, deadly demonstrations. The suicides recall a series of similar immolations in Tunisia, which set off the then-called Arab Spring. Multiple reports, most of them regional, note that 81 Tibetans have taken the extreme step of ... Read More

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The Real Reason the Middle East is Rioting

September 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
A scene from the YouTube version of the "Innocence of Muslims," which has been seen as the spark for recent attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts in the Muslim world. Is food insecurity the tinder for this blaze?

Within hours of the killings this week of four Americans diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, in Libya, more than a dozen blog posts popped up around the internet asking, “Who is Sam Bacile?” It was a natural question to pose: “Bacile” is the pseudonym of the filmmaker behind The Innocence of Muslims, an American-made video whose insulting depiction of the prophet Mohammed appears, at this point, to have incited anti-U.S. riots in Benghazi, Cairo, Tehran, and Sana’a, Yemen. It now appears, however, that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Libya was a ... Read More

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Not Twitter Revolutions, But Twitter-Assisted Revolutions

April 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s tempting to think of the Internet as the world’s best weapon against authoritarianism. Where it goes, democracy will follow, if we can just figure out how to strategically drop enough thumb drives, cell phones, and “shadow” technology. But, of course, the relationship between the Internet and democracy is much messier. And what we are now beginning to understand about it – with scientific rigor, that is – suggests that the laws governing this latest technology are not so different from its predecessors like radio and TV. “The Internet can play a role and facilitate ... Read More

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OWS, Egypt Expose Limits of Town Square Test

January 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Many of last year’s most dramatic photographs showed people packing public places to sound off. We saw memorable images of crowds gathering at Tahrir Square to lambast one government then castigate its successor, protesters at Zuccotti Park to voice outrage at Wall Street, and public outcry on the grounds of the Mazu Temple in the South China village of Wukan in December to denounce government land grabs. We saw gatherings in Syria, in Tunisia, in Greece, even in North Korea. If, as TIME magazine declares, 2011’s Person of the Year was “The Protester,” then 2011’s Place of the ... Read More

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Women Win Big in Tunisia Vote

November 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

With Tunisia’s ballot boxes closed but not stuffed, the real political winners in the country’s first free election are women. This election — for an assembly that will write the country’s new constitution — will likely result in the largest percentage of women in any assembly across the Arab world. When the dust settles, about a third of the 217 members of Tunisia’s constituent assembly will be women, twice as many women serving as currently serve in the U.S. Congress. Working as an official observer for the National Democratic Institute last week, I was struck both by how ... Read More

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The New Egypt: A Return to Dictatorship?

October 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

On October 9, Egypt's military made international headlines: Instead of enabling Copts to peacefully demonstrate the dismantling of a church in Asyut, it joined the riot police in confronting the protesters. They received support from Egyptians, whom the state media had urged to "protect the army." More than 200 people were wounded, and more than 20 died. The incident led Western observers to question the military's commitment to political reform. Journalists point to the ever-lengthening timetable for parliamentary and presidential elections, and to the large number of high-speed military ... Read More

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Post-Gadhafi: What’s Next for Libya’s Government?

October 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Moammar Gadhafi, the former Libyan dictator whose regime was toppled in August amid the Arab Spring, was killed on October 20 in his hometown of Surt. Writer Marc Herman was in Libya recently and reported for Miller-McCune.com on how the best the Libyan government can transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. This is his full report, as it appears in the latest issue of Miller-McCune magazine. For much of this summer, few knew where Moammar Gadhafi had fled, but it was a good bet he wasn’t in Nalut. A town of 30,000 residents in Libya’s Western mountains, Nalut was among the first ... Read More

More like this: Magazine Feature Story, November-December 2011, Politics
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