> project. We have the Arab Spring---hung in some kind of suspension---and
> equally hung, the Occupy movements---well not to mention the odious
> education policies, etc.
I'm tracking the northern African branch of the Arab Spring pretty closely these days, and there's actually plenty of positive change on the ground. The only standstill is Syria, where a murderous, self-destructive dictatorship is trying to trigger an ugly sectarian civil war, and will only succeed in replicating Iraq (the Sunni will win the Alawite elites of Syria, just like the Shiites defeated the Sunni elites in Iraq, but at a dreadful cost).
I first noted this last summer, when the Twitter and social media networks started to become more accurate, timely and informative than AlJazeera (which still does fine journalism, of course). Now those networks are slowly turning into social and political movements. Some of the best sources:
http://www.arabawy.org/ http://theangryegyptian.wordpress.com/ http://www.jadaliyya.com/ http://twitter.com/#!/ShababLibya
-- DRR