Arab spring News : jan 10, 2012

Arab Spring deals Iran losing cards
Winnipeg Free Press
When Iran saw the fall of the pro-western regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, it believed that its road to dominance in the Arab world was paved. But it soon discovered that the Arab masses were not eager to replace their autocratic and corrupt …

The Arab spring’s Sudanese subplot is cause for concern
The Guardian
Meanwhile, there is another Sudanese angle to the Arab spring story. The much-criticised Arab League mission to Syria is being led by Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, Sudan’s former military intelligence chief (in the early 1990s). …

The Guardian

The Arab Spring is not over yet
The Express Tribune
These chaotic leaderless movements, christened the Arab Spring, have already swept large swaths of North Africa, casting an ominous shadow over the Arab heartland, while reshaping the region and rewriting its history. It has prompted some of the rulers …

The Express Tribune

Arab Spring justice – but a free pass for Yemen’s Saleh
Christian Science Monitor
President Saleh, like most other rulers challenged by Arab Spring protests, has been difficult to remove from power. In Tunisia, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced into exile a year ago. After that, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was toppled and put …

Christian Science Monitor

The Arab Spring in global context
Russia & India Report
Much has been written about the Arab Spring of 2011 and rightly so: no other event in world politics had such wide-ranging effects both in the region and far beyond. The process that began in the waning days of 2010 has toppled regimes in four …

Hollywood’s Tunisian Film Festival marks Arab Spring anniversary
89.3 KPCC
The Arab Spring began in Tunisia on the day a fruit vendor set himself on fire to protest inhumane treatment by a city official. That dramatic protest incited thousands to take to the streets in the small North African country best known, much like LA, …

89.3 KPCC

Art and the Arab Spring
Aljazeera.com
The extent to which Gulf states such as Qatar gloss over the grounded realities of the Arab Spring – namely, the underlying call for human dignity undergirding each of these movements – is the extent to which its aesthetic output becomes reduced to …

Aljazeera.com

Amnesty predicts more Arab Spring repression
Press TV
2011 was the year when western-backed Arab dictators were either toppled or left barely clinging to power. But according to a new report by human rights group Amnesty International, those dictators responded to protestors’ legitimate demands for …

Press TV

The Saudi response to the ‘Arab spring‘: containment and co-option
Open Democracy
Saudi Arabia’s response to the ‘Arab spring‘ has been an attempt to co-opt movements for change in a bid to maintain the status quo. Madawi Al-Rasheed talks to Deniz Kandiyoti about the contradictions of a ruling elite that promotes a conservative …

The Soviet Fall and the Arab Spring
World Policy Institute (blog)
With the events of the Arab Spring, now is a good time to take stock of some lessons learned from 20 years of efforts to bring better human rights protections to former Soviet Union countries. Were our assumptions faulty? What could be done better, …