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Vicious Saudi autocrat Mohamed bin Salman has a new vision for Neom, his plan for a massive, $500 billion, AI-powered, nominally legally independent city-state of the future on the border with Egypt and Jordan. When we last left the crown prince, he had reportedly commissioned 2,300-pages’ worth of proposals from Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co. and Oliver Wyman boasting of possible amenities like holographic schoolteachers, cloud seeding to create rain, flying taxis, glow-in-the-dark beaches, a giant NASA-built artificial moon, and lots of robots: maids, cage fighters, and dinosaurs.

Now Salman has a bold new idea: One of the cities in Neom is a line. A line roughly 105-miles (170-kilometers) long and a five-minute walk wide, to be exact. No, really, it’s a line. The proposed city is a line that stretches across all of Saudi Arabia. That’s the plan.

“With zero cars, zero streets, and zero carbon emissions, you can fulfill all your daily requirements within a five minute walk,” the crown prince continued. “And you can travel from end to end within 20 minutes.”AdvertisementThe end-to-end in 20 minutes boast likely refers to some form of mass transit that doesn’t yet exist. That works out to a transit system running at about 317 mph (510 kph). That would be much faster than Japan’s famous Shinkansen train network, which is capped at 200 mph (321 kph). Some Japanese rail companies have tested maglev trains that have gone up to 373 mph (600 kph), though it’s nowhere near ready for primetime.

Saudi Arabia’s role as a counter-revolutionary force in the Middle East is widely understood and thoroughly documented. Historian Rosie Bsheer calls the Saudi kingdom “a counter-revolutionary state par excellence,” indeed one that was “consolidated as such.”[2] The Saudi monarchy has gone into counter-revolutionary overdrive since the onset of the Arab uprisings, scrambling to thwart popular movements and keep the region’s dictators in power — from Egypt and Bahrain to Yemen and Sudan (and beyond)

less understood is the counter-revolutionary role that Iran plays in the region’s politics

Iran as a “revolutionary” state has been dead for quite some time yet somehow stumbles along and blinds us to what is actually happening on the ground in the Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s history with WWE, like much of its frenetic investment in sports and entertainment over the past few years, is a study in how little diplomacy is needed when you control one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in history. Using their Public Investment Fund, valued at more than $776 billion, the Saudis have effectively bought some of the world’s most loyal fan bases, bent opponents to their will and wildly shifted the economics of international sports.

In the sports world, overcoming a reputation as a global pariah — condemned by human rights organizations for alleged war atrocities and its links to the 9/11 hijackers, the imprisonment of activists and the Khashoggi assassination — has been as simple for Saudi Arabia as advancing claims of innocence or autonomy.

The Saudi Pro League has become the default destination for aging soccer legends seeking unprecedented paydays, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly is paid roughly $220 million per year to play for Al Nassr. Lionel Messi turned down a similar bounty in favor of playing in the United States. But he still agreed to promote Saudi Arabia for a reported $25 million under a contract that mandates he is not permitted to make any remarks that “tarnish” the kingdom.

Globally, one in 10 Internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. Often young and digitally savvy, these users spread information independently of governments and beyond manipulation by cultural and religious elites. The researchers found that day-to-day civic discourse, not cyber terrorism, is the most important political aspect of the Internet in Muslim countries, and that the Internet is helping societies get better at running elections, providing civic services and exposing corruption. Researching their topic, Howard and his team determined that "The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy" would be the first book to move beyond potential and hypothetical relationships between the spread of communication technology, such as mobile phones and the Internet, and empirical evidence about democratic outcomes.

Western-produced surveillance technology sold to one authoritarian government became an investigative tool of choice to gather information about political dissidents -- and silence them

“The technology is becoming very sophisticated, and the only thing limiting it is how deeply governments want to snoop into lives,” says Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Surveillance is typically a state secret, and we only get bits and pieces that leak out.” Some industry insiders now say their own products have become dangerous in the hands of regimes where law enforcement crosses the line to repression.

Across the Middle East in recent years, sales teams at Siemens, Nokia Siemens, Munich-based Trovicor and other companies have worked their connections among spy masters, police chiefs and military officers to provide country after country with monitoring gear, industry executives say. Their story is a window into a secretive world of surveillance businesses that is transforming the political and social fabric of countries from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. Monitoring centers, as the systems are called, are sold around the globe by these companies and their competitors, such as Israel-based Nice Systems Ltd. (NICE), and Verint Systems Inc. (VRNT), headquartered in Melville, New York. They form the heart of so- called lawful interception surveillance systems. The equipment is marketed largely to law enforcement agencies tracking terrorists and other criminals. The toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.

With the start of the Lebanese Revolution on October 17th, young feminists were an integral part of an unprecedented social movement in Lebanon.  In fact, young feminists have been engaged in formulating the revolution’s demands pertaining to equality, justice, inclusion, dignity, rights, and the rule of law in our country.   Feminist demands during the revolution included but were not limited to calls for an egalitarian family code, an end to violence against women, call out against sexual harassment, the abolishment of the Kafala system - which holds migrant workers in a servile relationship with their employers - inclusion of all women and girls, rights for LGBTQI, rights for individuals with disabilities and special needs, dignity, as well as freedom from oppression and violence for all.  Young feminists emphasized the right to individual freedoms and bodily integrity. These demands were beautifully and intelligently framed in an analysis of patriarchy and how it is reproduced by within the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres

the patriarchal/confessional system has affected all aspects of life, in both the private and public spheres

the social movement of 2015 revealed signs of misogyny and hostility especially with the brutal attacks against trans-women who were exercising their rights to participate in public mobilization.

appeals to nationalism and the worst inclinations among voters are precisely what worry so many of Erdoğan’s critics. Not only is the country in an official state of emergency marked by sweeping purges and vicious terrorist attacks, but the president is also using the sort of violent rhetoric one expects to hear from would-be authoritarians in countries like the Philippines or United States. It is this tendency to dismiss or demonize opponents in conjunction with the new powers the referendum gives Erdoğan that have led so many commentators in America and Europe to prophesy the “end” of democracy in Turkey. Others point out the that electoral campaign has not been “free or fair,” which suggests that the victory was largely preordained, merely a reflection of a “slide” into dictatorship already occurring.[3]

since taking office, and despite terrorism and coup attempts, President Erdoğan has been unable to mobilize some of his most vocal supporters to grant him greater powers.

As for the provinces where the YES vote was higher than the November 2015 AKP vote or the 2014 Erdoğan vote, these occurred almost entirely in the southeast. While it is possible that voters in this region have grown sick and tired of PKK militants using urban areas as a base and provoking government reprisals, the numbers suggest an alternative: namely, that two years of violence and the government’s crackdown on regional political organizations have made mobilization difficult.

By February 2017, food inflation reached 42 percent. [3] Key staple goods have been particularly affected: Over the past year, Egyptians have seen the cost of bread and cooking oil go up by nearly 60 percent. [4] To put this into perspective, in the year leading up to the 2011 Arab Spring, food prices in Egypt were subject to an annual increase of around 15 percent. [5] Citing these and comparable developments, scholars have argued that grievances arising from food insecurity were a key factor in the outbreak of the 25th January Egyptian Revolution. [6]

In recent years, austerity measures have been thwarted by street-level mobilization in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and Mauritania.

In total, we identified 24 food protests occurring between March 6 and 7, 2017, in 17 districts across five governorates.

Kuwait will reduce the number of foreign expatriates living in the country within months through an updated residency law, according to the Interior Minister Anas al-Saleh speaking to the official Kuwait Television.Kuwait has made previous attempts to reduce the number of foreign nationals in the country, which is currently estimated to be around 70 percent, but public discussion has recentered on the issue in the wake of the lockdown enforced by the coronavirus pandemic.

Assembly Speaker Marzouq al-Ghanem said that the country would move to a focus on so-called “skilled” migrants rather than laborers, suggesting that the 1.3 million expats who “are either illiterate or can merely read and write” were not the priority

“Today, the real problem is not the resident,” Kuwaiti parliamentarian Omar al-Tabtabai told press at the time.“It is the person who brought the resident, and manipulated the resident, and let him live on the streets, and takes money from him, every month, every year,” he added.

Kais Saied’s brand of populism can be identified based on two observations: on the one hand, this populism subscribes to a Tunisian dynamic of relentless fighting for equality that began with the revolution, and on the other hand, it is an extension of the populist waves rippling through different democratic regimes around the world.

people called for equality among regions against a backdrop of strong disparity between the coast and the hinterland as well as in their relations with the State (clientelism, nepotism, institutional violence, etc.) or among citizens themselves (abolishing discrimination, particularly based on gender, skin colour, or geographical origin, right to dignity in the name of equal belonging to the nation)

a population that has been systematically classified, compartmentalized, and segregated into two categories: the "forward thinkers" and the "backward thinkers", the "educated" and the "ignorant", the "modern" and the "traditional".

Shafiq’s campaign was based on ‘asabiyya (group solidarity), he said. “We have reintegrated the big families of Gharbiyya,” he explained, rattling off the names of 11 clans that urged a vote for Shafiq

the brigadier left the room mumbling, “All this trouble over one vote.”

Thus far the SCAF has departed from the rigged elections of the Mubarak era, when a key objective was to depress the vote. Now the generals need buy-in from the electorate to offset the ongoing popular mobilization in streets and workplaces, so they seek to drive up turnout in elections that appear clean.

Erdogan the most powerful Turkish leader in more than half a century to win three consecutive terms. He now enjoys more power than any Turkish leader since Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Republic in 1923

Turks are uneasy. Some worry that the economy, which grew at a spectacular 8.9 percent last year, may be overheating. Others fear that Erdogan’s renewed power will lead him to antidemocratic excesses. A boycott of parliament by dozens of Kurdish deputies cast doubt on his willingness to resolve the long-festering Kurdish conflict. There is also a new source of uncertainty, emerging from uprisings in Arab countries. For the last several years, Turks have pursued the foreign policy goal of “zero problems with neighbors.” In recent months they have been forced to realize that they cannot, after all, be friends with everyone in the neighborhood.

Turkey has emerged from the shadow of military power, a breakthrough of historic proportions. Whether it is moving toward an era of European-style freedom or simply trading one form of authoritarianism for another is unclear.

Second, as opposed to their more famous totalitarian cousins, these authoritarian rulers did not rely on political mobilization. While some leaders, like Salazar and Franco, distrusted mass politics and actively promoted public apathy, others, like Dollfuss and Metaxas, tried and failed to accumulate a mass following. Others, including Vargas, approached political mobilization cautiously. Despite some populist tendencies, including a healthy dose of regime propaganda, Vargas never formed a political party or mass movement and even went so far as to ban all organized political activity in Brazil in 1937.

power was located in the dreary upper reaches of the bureaucracy (sometimes joined by the security apparatus) rather than in any political party

Sisi appears to take charge of an Egyptian state that has pulled leading institutions (army, religious apparatus and so on) together. While he may direct national policy in a broad sense, he seems to lack the tools or the interest to build a system in which all of these bodies answer directly and constantly to him.

In a recent article (ungated), I document the co-option of social media by governments in Russia, China, and the Middle East, and find four different ways in which they have begun to use social media to prolong their rule.

social media is increasingly being used to actually boost regime stability and strength, transforming it from an obstacle to government rule into another potential tool of regime resilience

social media is becoming a safe and relatively cheap way for rulers to discover the private grievances and policy preferences of their people

North and East Syria faces serious challenges in the fight against COVID-19. 600,000 IDPs and refugees live in camps across the region, their situation already precarious without a pandemic. Ongoing attacks by Turkish forces, Turkey-backed militias, and ISIS complicate the security situation and threaten essential civilian infrastructure like water lines.According to the Rojava Information Center, the region has only one ventilator per 100,000 people, and can handle a maximum of 460 cases before its health system is overrun

Strict preventative measures have been in place for weeks to stave off the threat of an outbreak. A lockdown went into force on March 23rd, and has generally been adhered to — and enforced. Border crossings are closed, with exemptions for some humanitarian aid. All individuals entering the region, including travelers from government-held Syria flying into the Qamishlo airport, have been subject to quarantine.

Cooperatives form a significant part of North and East Syria’s economy. Material conditions in the region — which for most of its existence has been surrounded by hostile actors — required economic self-sufficiency.

thisarticle highlights three distinct mythologies (economic miracle, democraticgradualism and secularism) about Tunisia that prevented a clearer understandingof the political and socio-economic situation

studies of Arab politics haveswung between the democratization paradigm and the authoritarian resilience one.Both certainly captured important aspects of the political developments taking placein the Arab world over the last two decades and to an extent still do, but, at the sametime, missed equally significant changes that, if identified earlier, might havecontributed to lessen the surprise of the Arab Spring. Specifically, the contentionhere is that both paradigms tended to focus too strongly on what was visible andreadily identifiable at the level of the state and state – society relations, but did notaccount for important unintended consequences that were occurring and diffusing inwider society as well as for less visible socio-political phenomena because they werepartially trapped in the mythology served up by the Ben Ali regime. What this meansis that both paradigms operated from similar mythologies about Tunisia, while, atthe same time, drawing very different conclusions about them

unintended consequences have animpact on the regime because the reforms it initiates have surprising effects that itneeds to deal with, but, interestingly, they also have an impact on scholars whosetheoretical tools might need sharpening in light of the occurrence of events thatcontradict what seemed to be valid theoretical assumptions

This note will briefly outline the notion of an Arab “variety of capitalism” characterized by the central role of a distributive state whose interventions lead to a deep, and at least in parts unintended, segmentation of business and labour markets into insiders and outsiders. It will explain how this model has led to economic stagnation and contributed to the uprisings of 2011 as well as how it has hobbled economic adjustment after the uprisings, both under anciens and new regimes. Its pessimistic conclusion is that distributional institutions in most Arab countries remain very sticky, having created powerful vested interests not only in business but also in society at large that undermine the negotiation of a new “social contract” – a concept that many are talking about but no one seems to be able to map out in any detail.

Authoritarian-populist republics like Algeria, Egypt, (pre-war) Syria and Tunisia have achieved particularly good human development scores considering their modest levels of wealth (figure 3).

While Arab governments’ ambition to provide might have led to solid coverage of basic services, most Arab states have pledged much wider material guarantees to their citizens – typically beyond their fiscal and administrative capacity, especially once economic growth started stalling in the 1970s. The result has been a rigid insider-outsider division in which some benefit from Arab governments’ relative generosity while others remain excluded.

Erica Chenweth begins “Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response: Is Violence Towards Civilian-based Movements on the Rise?” (Global Responsibility to Protect[1], July 2017) with the following rather discouraging statement, at least if you’re a protester: Through 2010, nonviolent mass movements tended to be surprisingly effective in removing incumbent leaders from power or achieving territorial independence, even when they experienced some repression from the government. However, since 2010, the success rates of nonviolent campaigns have declined by a staggering rate (about 20% below the average)

She speculates that the cause of the this decline is due to Authoritarian Adaptation: the ability of authoritarian governments to adopt more politically savvy repressive tools may be part of the reason for the decline in success rates in the past six years.21. Authoritarian leaders have begun to develop and systematize sophisticated techniques to undermine and thwart nonviolent activists.

Dana R. Fisher, Kenneth T. Andrews, Neal Caren, Erica Chenoweth, Michael T. Heaney, Tommy Leung, L. Nathan Perkins, and Jeremy Pressman in “The science of contemporary street protest: New efforts in the United States” (Science Advances, October 23, 2019). This is a fascinating article, which I encourage all big data fans to read in full. From the abstract: This article reviews the two most central methods for studying street protest on a large scale: building comprehensive event databases and conducting field surveys of participants at demonstrations.

Although the Menkaure pyramid is a part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, UNESCO said in an email that it was unaware of the project and had “written to the Egyptian authorities to ask them for more information.”

a group of archaeologists called the project “entirely unscientific” and accused those behind it of chasing publicity over legitimate archaeological inquiry. They stressed that documentation cannot occur at the same time as the excavation shown in the video.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementProceeding with the project “is tantamount to tampering with Egyptian antiquities and undermining its antiquity and history,”