Epstein Secrets

plied to the Middle East for so long that nothing, it seems — no amount of extraordinary change — can silence them. After the successful revolts in Cairo and Tunis, the slanders abated. Soon, however, the old messages depicting the Middle East as extreme, fundamentalist, and hostile to democracy bega

imitations, its borderless online conversations are offsetting the region's political, religious, social, and cultural balkanization. The people of West Asia and North Africa are talking among themselves, even if their governments remain remote. That is a source of hope, if not yet of the systematic and

rael has continued to build in the West Bank. Television footage of Abbas and Hamas politburo head Khaled Meshal clasping each other's shoulders in Cairo in May was accordingly greeted with hope, but also much wariness, in Ramallah. "They are like two prisoners fighting over scraps of bread, instead

argument, and plunge instead into a pluralistic discourse that will engage whole populations. SHI'ITE ABSOLUTISM, SUNNI ROYALTY Some societies of West Asia ("Middle East"), nevertheless, are markedly averse to concepts of civil society, most notably Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran, of course, projects Pers

applied to the Middle East for so long that nothing, it seems - no amount of extraordinary change - can silence them. After the successful revolts in Cairo and Tunis, the slanders abated. Soon, however, the old messages depicting the Middle East as extreme, fundamentalist, and hostile to democracy began

limitations, its borderless online conversations are offsetting the region's political, religious, social, and cultural balkanization. The people of West Asia and North Africa are talking among themselves, even if their governments remain remote. That is a source of hope, if not yet of the systematic and co