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I personally await his solution for the frequent breakdown of the sewage system of asking the citizens to hold it in as long as possible.

The people of the Mirage State of Egypt have just stopped being that, and started to become actual citizens. Hopefully the rest of the state will follow suit.

Mouldi Fehem, a member of the PDP, one of the parties present at the event, disagreed with the representatives of the coalition, stating that it was normal for parties who share similar views to gather and express their opinions, especially now with the “advent of religious extremism.” “We are all here because we want to protect people’s freedoms and rights,” he said. When asked about attendees who shared close ties with the RCD, he replied, “We should not let our desire for revenge take control over us; we should first see who really was accountable for the crimes committed by the former regime.”

The transitional justice system is not working well, and unless something is done the previous clan will take over again.

Blocking websites like Facebook and Twitter would have angered the business masters in whose lap [Hosni Mubarak’'s son] Gamal Mubarak was sitting. It was an unholy coalition between the sponsors of the corrupt regime and the popular social-networking Web sites.

youths in Egypt, pre-revolution, lived two lives, one online and one off-line. The off-line life is very limited in access to information, freedom of speech and mobilization, and even in access to each other. For decades, it was illegal for five people to gather for any reason (per emergency law), although it was tolerated except when it was politically motivated. Online political activists used terms like “group,” “room,” and “comment” as if they had physical meanings. The Internet offered an open environment that politicized the youths, allowed them to raise awareness on possibilities of shaping their future, diversified their perspectives, anonymized their identities, gave them the taste of free speech, and pushed them to see through the regime propaganda and despise it.

Since the Egyptian government had made the brick-and-mortar world so unfriendly to free expression and the Internet was so readily available to just tweet, update Facebook, or send a quick blog post, it became the space to express your thoughts or post a news item. As the people posted live, people would react live and a conversation developed. I believe 2010 was a tipping point for this interaction; we went from conversation to a public debate, and just not with activists but with a larger, less engaged tech-savvy population. Administrators were very deliberate in cultivating a relationship with this population.

none of the administrators in Egypt, for obvious reasons, could use his real Facebook identity to administer the page, and that was a violation of Facebook terms and conditions. Nadine, given her relatively safer location, was the firewall whenever Facebook realized the fake identities we used and deleted them. She would give us back access.

the most important factor in triggering the Egyptian revolution was the effect of Tunisia’s revolution, which did not start on Facebook. Neither did any of the other Arab revolutions. If it weren’t for Facebook, the Egyptian revolution would have started anyway. The effect of a Facebook call to a timed revolution with a large outreach (that activated an organized political activist community that’s been in the making for decades) is making the revolution shorter, more organized, with fewer casualties and more theatrical. These are important effects, especially to reduce casualties. But the multitude of factors involved with the startup, the process, and the success of the Egyptian revolution makes the Facebook effect a minor one

the angle that I hear most on Arab revolutions in Western media is the social media/Facebook/Internet one, rather than the more important, stronger and more direct effect of the injustice perpetuated by the dictators sponsored by Western regimes.

We have to remember that 850 people died. Not just Facebook profiles but flesh and blood people

Politics wasn't a favored subject of discussion for the sheikh. The Gulf War's scripted violence had left a strong impression: When prompted, he often reduced political matters to military or special forces' work. He revered the British royal family and the SAS, Britain's commando elite, and was surprised to learn that I had not voted for George H.W. Bush, the liberator of Kuwait. I soon learned that he admired winners in general. An avid sports fan, he supported Manchester United and the Dallas Cowboys, then the reliable champions of British and American football. For the first time in our acquaintance, this love of winners made his unfocused mind appear predictable.

Few Bahrainis acknowledged the large U.S. naval base that remains today

He seemed to be blandly incurious and without serious prejudices. He certainly did not read or write for pleasure. In fact, my ability to make sense of ordinary maps surprised him, as if a mark of special training

While government hours are 7 to 2, a concession to the sweltering climate, I soon learned to arrive by 10, preceding by a half-hour the sheikh and his retinue

I visited the new University of Bahrain and naively asked around for the political science department. The country's public university didn't teach the troublesome social sciences

The sheikh once saw the four-wheel-drive Range Rover he had provided for my personal use covered in mud, the result of a winter downpour that flooded the old part of Manama, which lacked street drains. He winced as if he had been pinched. He politely asked my plans to have the car washed, and I shilly-shallied an answer. The capacious Rover was soon quietly replaced by a small Mercedes 190 with mechanical problems. The exchange worked to my disadvantage in more ways than one, for the Rover's license plates indicated it belonged to the sheikh's father, Bahrain's security chief. The Rover thus conferred comic book superpowers that induced Pavlovian salutes from traffic cops and building guards – such a machine rightly should not have been dragged through the mud. In contrast, a Pakistani mechanic once patched the undistinguished Mercedes with cardboard wrapped in twine.

The monarchy is not wholly bereft of tolerance; it just occurs near the apex, among the family's scattered layer of advisers and aides, many of whom are foreign born. The Al Khalifa are ambivalent about otherwise touchy matters if they judge someone useful to their purposes. Issues such as religion, my shopkeeper-ish Indian ethnicity or my habit of calling the sheikh by name without prefixing his inherited title – unthinkable for a Bahraini commoner – never came up. I wasn't unique: The sheikh's banker, the man who handed me cash each month, belonged to the same Iraqi-Jewish émigré family as Bahrain's current female ambassador to the U.S., also a Jew.

Of course, ownership of the many reefs and islands between the two states had implications for oil and gas exploration. Yet the sheikh always spoke to me as if only family honor mattered. This normally unexcitable man clearly disliked Qatar's Al Thani rulers. He viewed the boundary disputes as a contest between entitled Al Khalifa patricians and Al Thani nouveau riche – possessors of the world's largest natural gas field, rulers of the country with the world's highest per capita GDP, and, one might add, imminent founders of the upstart Al-Jazeera TV network. Propelled by rivalry, Sheikh Fawaz simply wanted to beat them this time.

I also kept mum about the surprisingly incautious lawyers I had met who spoke bitterly about the regime's poor human rights record and discrimination against Shiites. I found these middle-aged men in their cheap, gray suits in almost every coffeehouse or bar I frequented. None appeared bent on importing Iran's revolution. They seemed defeated and physically worn, even underweight, but determined to share with a foreigner their stories of regime prejudice and abuse

Modern Bahrain works on the bases of stark social segregation, selective memory and diversion. I caught glimpses of the thousands of dark-skinned Asian laborers only as they fixed roads in the debilitating heat, or sat in the cheapest curry shops and all-male hookah stands where air conditioning was absent and Indian films played nightly on color TVs. Local lore had it that weather forecasters lied about the temperature to avoid work stoppages. The island's wealthiest foreigners were diverted in ways that assumed – often accurately – an inebriate's view of the good life. Although the teetotaler Sheikh Fawaz showed no interest in nightlife, Manama groaned under the weight of barhoppable hotels and nightclubs. Many clubs featured teams of comely Filipinas belting out pop songs. A large bar in the downtown area catered to U.S. sailors, complete with country-themed karaoke, line dancing and Budweiser beer.

Later that night, Sheikh H. and I talked politics again. Tired, he quietly noted that he hadn't been surprised to hear that the crown prince wasn't liked in the cafes. He said this accorded with his own sense of the future ruler's unpopularity. He added that others in the ruling family had serious doubts about the man, too. They worried that the crown prince was infatuated with the tiny military forces he commanded and wasn't savvy enough to handle the complexities of being emir. But, Sheikh H. admitted, nothing could be done about it. Looking back, Crown Prince Hamad may have felt little need for the savvy of an emir. He succeeded his father in 1999, and, in 2002, elevated his own title from "His Highness the Emir" to the historically unprecedented "His Majesty the King of Bahrain." Today, he shakes that vainglorious title over a resentful patrimony less than one-third the size of Rhode Island.

discrimination and chronic inequality explain the Kingdom's centrifugal politics better than old doctrinal differences. Nonetheless, the strategy of minority rulers cultivating the support of other minorities is a tested one (witness Syria). The Al Khalifa also have a long history of reliance on authoritative foreigners, stretching over a century from Bahrain's days as a British protectorate past independence in 1971. Indeed, Bahrain is now a U.S. protectorate, as the quietly expanding presence of the 5th Fleet confirms. An American arms dealer dubbed "The Merchant of Death" was a recurring figure throughout my stay in Manama.

Sociologists say that pre-modern bureaucracies value personal relations over professional merit. Sheikh Fawaz unwittingly supported this notion when he asked me to attend meetings with foreign investment companies seeking to do business with the national Pension Fund. Initially, I took notes while two chatty Merrill Lynch representatives pitched portfolio options. The reps struggled to discern my relationship with the sheikh they wanted to impress. The scene was repeated with other would-be fund partners, some of whom affected a false camaraderie that left Sheikh Fawaz unmoved. After a while, he asked if I would write a report on the Pension Fund's performance. The idea was laughable – I knew nothing about investment. But I didn't say no. Staring at the fund's data, I parroted the language of "small caps" versus "big caps" and other terms found in the introductory investment texts Sheikh Fawaz supplied, and wrote his report, inserting a couple of charts for gravitas.

the sheikh asked if I would consider writing a doctoral thesis for him at Cambridge or another elite English university. I quickly said no; ethical considerations aside, I knew he was unlikely to do it anyway (a correct assumption, it turned out)

He has severely curtailed foreign and local media since becoming information minister in 2010. In the months preceding the Arab Spring, the anti-censorship group Reporters Without Borders dropped Bahrain's rank from 119th to 144th in the world. As regime apologist, the sheikh still speaks in the same, mildly narcotized cadence that suggests aristocratic ennui more than stupidity. He effusively praises the largely foreign security forces responsible for the killings, torture and detentions, while claiming that outsiders want to destabilize the country. Even so, the minister now insists, the affairs of the Kingdom are "back to normal."

A relieved Sheikh Fawaz – now with 14,000-plus followers on Twitter – ecstatically praised the current crown prince "for his great exertions to return the Grand Prix race to Bahrain." Echoes of the sports-obsessed young heir pinged through my head

He was a rigid and competitive yet unsinister man 20 years ago. What would he have become given a different pedigree? Dictatorships, like Sheikh Fawaz today, work to obscure those choices

The US and Israel can no longer rely on dependable and friendly Arab dictators, and will finally have to take the aspirations for genuine peace with the Palestinians seriously. The Middle East may seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place – that is, between secular dictatorships and Islamic fundamentalisms. But indeed a third alternative, a secular democratic one, does exist. We must hope that the democratic forces in all these countries will eventually be able to harness both the Islamists and the militarists.

One "daily bag" that can be consumed by one person in one day requires hundreds of litres of waters to produce

In 1972, then-Prime Minister Mohsin Al-Aini forbade qat-chewing by public servants during working hours and banned its cultivation on lands run by state-controlled religious trusts. He received death threats from tribesmen and qat farm owners around Sanaa. Many Yemenis suspect his eventual dismissal from office three months later was in large part due to his push.

"As water prices go up, the competition drives more and more people toward farming qat which in turn uses up even more water. If the spread of qat farms continues like this soon all our arable land will be used to grow qat."

everyone chews

there are no established voting patterns to base predictions

On one side of the battle will be the military, state institutions including the courts that are still controlled by Mubarak-era personnel, the business community, other people who thrived under the old regime, and ordinary Egyptians who want order restored. On the other side will be the Muslim Brothers, most Islamists, and the Egyptians who rose up in January 2011 and do not want to see the regime they thought they had defeated make a comeback.

The Supreme Constitutional Court (whose president, not incidentally, is also the head of the presidential election commission) will soon rule whether the election law used in the parliamentary election was constitutional. If it decides it was not, it is possible the court will disband the parliament, depriving the Muslim Brotherhood of the only center of power it, rather than the old regime, controls

Should Ahmed Shafiq win the presidential vote and the court finds the parliament was unconstitutionally elected, Islamists will have lost the battle with the old regime

In the short run, these are the battles that will determine the winners, and the old regime appears to be better armed, controlling the institutions and the security forces. In the long run, the outcome is much less predictable because the majority of Egyptians have rejected both the Islamist candidate and the one from the old regime

"Islam and democracy can be compatible just as you can have religious-inspired democracy you can have religious dictatorship, and you can have secular democracies and you can have secular dictatorships

In the past in the Arab world, more or less, we have had throughout the Arab world secular dictatorships

There are essentially no non-state institutions in the country. Saudi Arabia has not had trade unions since the 1950s, when the government banned them in the oil-rich province where the then-American oil company ARAMCO was based. Likewise, there are no legal political parties, youth associations, women’s organizations, or independent human rights organizations.

By intervening, the Saudis hoped not only to protect their Bahraini ally, but to split their internal opposition using sectarian politics. As the protests grew and the GCC deliberated, the Saudi official press peddled the regime’s line: an Iranian-Shia conspiracy was targeting the Sunni heartland. The champions of Sunni Islam would save the Gulf from the Iranian-Shia takeover. The Saudi regime proved not only to its subjects, but also to Western governments, a determination to crush protest and expel Iranian and Shia influence from the peninsula. The message to President Obama was to think twice before supporting democracy and human rights in the Arabian Peninsula. The message to Saudis was that critics would be tarred as traitors to the nation and enemies of the faith.

All local newspapers reported on it favorably.

Many in the younger generation are critical of the regime’s repressive gender policies, but they support its opposition to the Shia as alien, heretical, and loyal to Iran.

the “liberal press”—also officially controlled—published articles denouncing sectarianism. Liberal authors attacked sectarian preachers of hate and instead celebrated national unity, wataniyya. Not that these liberal authors favored political protest or close ties with the Shia. Rather, they offered Saudis an alternative discourse that still served the regime’s interests. With society divided between supposedly liberal intellectuals and hateful preachers, the regime confirms in the minds of people that it alone can broker between the fiercely opposed groups.

Protesters avoid arrest by supporting the king and demanding that bureaucrats respect his royal decrees. Anger is therefore channelled toward low-level civil servants without challenging the regime directly or insisting on royal intervention. As long as protests do not question the policies of senior members of the royal family, they are tolerated, perhaps to some extent welcomed as a means to vent public anger.

The press has dubbed the wave of small-scale demonstrations “protest fever.” Importantly, women are uniting in pursuit of their interests and rights, suggesting that this is the beginning of a civil rights movement. Saudi women have agitated before—in 1990 some were arrested for violating a driving ban—but the 2011 protests are different. At local and regional levels, women’s demands are more fundamental than before. They want employment, the right to vote in municipal elections, and freedom of speech.

When protesters agitate for the end of the regime, they are shown no mercy. As of this writing, seven demonstrators have been shot and killed by Saudi security forces. In the virtual world, government agents continue to use propaganda, counterarguments, and rumors against calls for protest.

should pressure start coming from the West, the Saudi regime knows how to exploit its allies’ weak spots: fear of terrorism and an insatiable appetite for oil and military contracts.

Digital activism will continue to provide an outlet to a population denied basic freedom. But with popular unrest largely under wraps and the West silent, the regime faces no threat in the short term.

The economic and social deprivation, political oppression, and corruption that triggered revolutions elsewhere are all present in Saudi Arabia, but these alone are not sufficient to precipitate an uprising. Saudi Arabia does not have trade unions—the majority of its working population is foreign, which has stunted the growth of organized labor—a women’s movement, or an active student population, three factors that helped to make protests in Tunis and Cairo successful. Elsewhere in the Arab world, in the absence of these important factors, revolt stumbled, turned violent, and could not progress without serious foreign intervention. Libya is a case in point.

where the state is the only institution that matters, effectively bringing people together offline may be impossible