democracy assistance to the region, which will drop from $459.2 million to $298.3 million
Egypt's New Police State - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The U.S. Is Giving Up on Middle East Democracy-and That's a Mistake - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Today’s Middle East is a product, at least in part, of failed democratization, and one of the reasons it failed was the timid, half-hearted support of the Obama administration.
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“it was an externally driven shift in the cost of suppression, not changes in domestic conditions, that contributed most centrally to the demise of authoritarianism in the 1980s and 1990s.” They find that “states’ vulnerability to Western democratization pressure… was often decisive.”
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it is also worth noting that President Bush acknowledged the existence of a “tyranny-terror” link—the notion that the root causes of extremism and terrorism can be found in the region’s enduring lack of democracy.
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What is needed are more systematic reforms focused on fundamental institutions. These include things like constraining the military’s role in civilian domains of governance, deep reform in the security and justice sectors including law enforcement and policing, and comprehensive “renovation” of the civil service sector. These are large-scale, long-term, and expensive undertakings that far transcend the modest parameters of most U.S. democracy promotion programs.
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We argue that the U.S. and its partners now need to consider a very different approach to Middle East democracy assistance.
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Conventional democracy promotion activities tend to focus on the process and “retail” aspects of democratic politics—things like elections, political party training, get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns, and civil society enhancement. While these are undoubtedly important, they are insufficient to deliver lasting reforms. Authoritarianism in the Arab world has proven time and time again—even in supposedly post-revolutionary settings such as Egypt today—that it can weather the annoyances of elections and civil society.
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the administration’s approach to the region is characterized almost entirely by ad-hoc crisis management and traditional counterterrorism approaches. Its one larger-scale reform initiative—a half-hearted proposal for a
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we make the case for a new Multilateral Endowment for Reform (MER) that would tie significant levels of financial assistance—in the billions of dollars—to reform commitments and benchmarked implementation performance by partner nations.
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provide a real incentive for countries to embark down a path to deeper and more enduring political reforms while retaining the ability to pull back funding if they do not deliver.
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This article begins by illuminating the regional democracy assistance cuts that are dropping from $459.2 million to $298.3 million It explains that the Bush Administration began the quest for democracy in the Middle East, and the Obama administration has only continued in his footsteps. The author presents the viewpoint that the U.S. approach to Arab democratization has been in the form of "ad-hoc crisis management" rather than "large scale reform initiatives." Promoting democracy in the form of democratic politics are insufficient, elections and political parties have consistently proved to weather away and fester further civil strife. Consequently, the article proposes a new approach to the region conflict. This approach calls for "systematic reforms" focusing on basic institutions such as the civil service sector, justice and law enforcement, and the military's role in governance. The idea is that addressing these lacking departments in the arab world will eventually pave the way to a smoother democratic transition.
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shared by kristaf on 22 Sep 14
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What's Next For Egypt After Sisi's Win? : NPR - 0 views
www.npr.org/...next-for-egypt-after-sisis-win
#EgyptElections #MuslimBrotherhood #PoliticalPrisoners #Sisi
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Muslim Brotherhood
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in 2011, the revolution hatched in Tahrir Square helped bring down Egypt's long-time dictator, Hosni Mubarak
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How can be genuinely democratic when certain portions of society are basically banned, not allowed to participate in that way, if they're members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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And also all voices of dissent being suppressed. Thousands of people characterized as political prisoners are languishing in jail here in Egypt.
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his is a country that has a difficult economy, power outages, a huge gap between the rich and poor. So this is a president that's going to have to deal with all the issues that Egyptian's are trying to deal with along with security.
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The story discusses the election of Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi following the forced removal of Morsi whom was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the election in an effort to make their presence known as well as their strong belief in having Morsi return to office. The Muslim Brotherhood still banned from being recognized as an organization establishes the contradiction of the elections being "genuinely democratic."
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The story discusses the election of Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi following the forced removal of Morsi whom was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the election in an effort to make their presence known as well as their strong belief in having Morsi return to office. The Muslim Brotherhood still banned from being recognized as an organization establishes the contradiction of the elections being "genuinely democratic."
Beyond Torture: The CIA's Shameful Kidnapping of a 12-Year-Old Girl - The Atlantic - 0 views
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"Media Freedom: Closed Until Further Notice" A... - Oum Cartoon أم كرتون - 0 views
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shared by nicolet1189 on 10 Nov 14
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Twitter, terror and free speech: Should Twitter block Islamic snuff videos? | The Econo... - 0 views
www.economist.com/...twitter-terror-and-free-speech
ISIS free speech Social Media twitter censorship
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YouTube removed one version of the video, citing a violation of their policy on violent content. On Tuesday, Twitter announced a new policy that it would remove images and video of the deceased at the request of family member
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The logical incoherence of this statement aside, is disseminating offensive material the same thing as promoting it? It is conceivable that the video could incite potential terrorists and others harboring anti-American sentiments to copycat acts of violence. But it is equally true that content of this kind wakes people up t
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Should platforms like YouTube and Twitter really have the power to censor what content we can or cannot see? At least in America, the suppression of disturbing or offensive content, if it does not incite violence, is a direct violation of our principles of free speech. Especially in this instance, it seems deeply inappropriate to respond to authoritarianism with authoritarian action.
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It’s completely understandable that family members don’t want footage of a loved one’s death to spread, but it’s not clear that that’s their decision to make.
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It’s really not Twitter’s decision either—unless we want to grant tech giants the power to control public knowledge and discourse, a dangerous precedent indeed.
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The author of this article strongly opposes Social Media companies, specifically Twitter censoring ISIS related materials on their website. The author argues it violates free speech and the democratic principles associated with the website, arguing censoring a beheading video would be a slippery slope for future content.
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Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad - The Atlantic - 0 views
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So it is important to understand how their “social contract”—their view of their relationship with one another and with the government—evolved and then shattered.
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Nationalists took this diversity as a primary cause of weakness and adopted as their primary task integrating the population into a single political and social structure.
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or Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice: it offered, or seemed to offer, the means to overcome his origins in a minority community and to point toward a solution to the disunity of Syrian politics
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small group gathered in the southwestern town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them
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All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective
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a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings.
Crackdown On Student Protesters In Egypt - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Arab governments are failing on human trafficking | Brian Whitaker | Opinion | The Guar... - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...-governments-human-trafficking
human trafficking Saudi Arabia prostitution abuse
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"Trafficking in persons" covers various forms of exploitation including, in the words of the international Palermo protocol, "sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs".
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In Saudi Arabia if workers file a complaint against their employers about abuse they are usually returned to their employers or pressured to drop the charges. Typically, the employers will file a false counter-argument against the workers for theft, witchcraft, and adultery in retaliation. This country is also accused of failing to take action to reduce the demand of prostitution or child sex tourism.