Bahrain’s Inconvenient Revolution: A Battle Between A King And A Family Of Freedom Fighters

“There is a pattern of economic interests, political allegiances and military parameters that come into play when it comes to Bahrain. We know that, but yet a people cannot be made to live in slavery because it is politically and economically convenient to foreign powers.”

Catherine Shakdam
By Catherine Shakdam
Bahrain

Dubbed “the inconvenient revolution” by those on the ground who have fought it, Bahrain’s democratic uprising remains very much a black dot on the Arab Spring map, a revolutionary movement which the media has gladly avoided due to the overlapping and conflicting political and moral interests it has laid bare. “We knew that Bahrain’s freedom

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The Arab Revolution No One Saw Coming

Aware that words often cut deeper than swords, Yemen’s old guard unleashes a media storm on another group that is galvanizing support among Yemenis disillusioned with officials and politics as usual.

Catherine Shakdam
By Catherine Shakdam
Yemen

When a sweeping democratic revolutionary movement took center stage in the Middle East in 2011, the world could not help but stare in awe as dictatorship after dictatorship fell before popular will, unable to oppose people’s cries for freedom any longer. Those powers the United States had tied itself to suddenly came undone, leaving behind little

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European Tech Company Helped Bahrain Government Spy On Arab Spring Activists

Government used UK-German software to spy on, blackmail influential protesters

Nadia Prupis
By Nadia Prupis
(Photo/Al Jazeera English via Flickr)

The Bahraini government spied on some of the country's most prominent lawyers, politicians, journalists, and activists during the Arab Spring revolutionary movement, new documents show. Netzpolitik.org reports that using the malicious FinFisher spyware provided by Gamma International, a German-UK surveillance company, the Bahraini government

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Maduro: Like In Kiev, US Fomenting ‘Slow Motion Coup’ In Venezuela

United States would like to “get their hands on [our] oil,” says leftist leader

Common Dreams
By Common Dreams

Venezuela President Nicolas Madura, in an exclusive interview with The Guardian published Tuesday, says the United States is actively fomenting a 'slow motion coup' in his country, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing his democratically elected government as a way to gain more profitable access to its vast oil resources. Rejecting the dominate

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Israeli Airstrikes Escalate Tensions With Syria

Analysts said they did not expect the situation to deteriorate, since neither Israel nor Syria is interested in a full-fledged war.

Associated Press
By Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli warplanes unleashed a series of airstrikes on Syrian military posts early Wednesday, killing one soldier and wounding seven in one of the most serious clashes between the countries in the past four decades. The airstrikes came in retaliation for a roadside bombing a day earlier in the Golan Heights that wounded four

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Recalling My First Journey To Tahrir Square 35 years Ago

I took a year off from university between August 1978 and 1979 to backpack around Europe and parts of North Africa. After six months of traveling through Northern Europe, which included picking grapes at a vineyard in France and spending time as a goat herder in Northern Greece, I was on my way to explore […]

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller
Tahrir Square

I took a year off from university between August 1978 and 1979 to backpack around Europe and parts of North Africa. After six months of traveling through Northern Europe, which included picking grapes at a vineyard in France and spending time as a goat herder in Northern Greece, I was on my way to explore the Greek Isles. When I got to Athens, I

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