Out of the one and a half million Syrians living in Egypt, more than 300,000 have recently come here seeking a safe haven from the never ending shelling and bombing in their homeland. Thousands of Arabs, mostly Muslims, believed that Egypt is where they could start all over again and […]

In the old days Globalization was usually by means of mounted warriors, ships or explorers who roamed continents. At first they were driven by need, afterwards they did it out of greed and to some degree, out of curiosity. Settlers, travelers on mules and camel caravans, followed the warriors. Today we have […]

Biscuit Theory was a flash in the pan. It erupted as an attempt to explain why and how civil society organisations (CSOs) work together, and disappeared just as quickly in a puff of their own transiency. Its simple claim was that the extent of CSO cooperation correlates directly to the […]

Arab  Spring, Act I: the seduction of straightforward revolutions. In December 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, set fire to himself to protest against his treatment by the authorities when he tried to get back the wares they had confiscated. . This self-immolation in the name […]

Syria is beset by an historic problem of weak state institutions, with the exception of those state and quasi-state forces through which the ruling Assad dynasty has exercised its power. The account offered by Seth Kaplan in A New U.S. Policy For Syria: Fostering Political Change in a Divided State offers […]