Epstein Secrets

the response: French support for Ben Ali was embarrassing; the US was praising Mubarak days before he departed. Muammar Gaddafi had no friends - and the Arab League was crucial in providing a figleaf for UN-sanctioned Nato intervention. Bashar al-Assad, by contrast, has yet to be condemned by the UN for a crackdo

nder of the defeat of jihadi ideology in an Arab world being transformed by people power. Another variable has been the response: French support for Ben Ali was embarrassing; the US was praising Mubarak days before he departed. Muammar Gaddafi had no friends - and the Arab League was crucial in providing

Hafez committed cruelties of his own, but he always managed to remain within the Arab fold. Bashar is different -- reckless -- and has prompted even the Arab League, which has a history of overlooking the follies of its members, to suspend Damascus' membership. The fight still rages, Aleppo and Damascus have n

re demanding to be rid of him. The senior commanders of the armed forces cast him aside, and he joined his fellow despot, Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had fallen a month earlier. From Cairo, the awakening became a pan-Arab affair, catching fire in Yemen and Bahrain. As a monarchy, the latter

black ball. He'll be trouble for whomever gets the presidential post. Enter Amr Moussa, former Mubarak foreign minister and Secretary General of the Arab League. The cigar- smoking Moussa is one of the best known Egyptians on the international scene. Smart, tough and smooth- as-silk, the multi-lingual Moussa

Saudi Arabia was uneasy with 2011's outpouring of people power from the start, lest it flow into the kingdom as well. First, when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia, he and his family were welcomed in Saudi Arabia. Then, Riyadh worked EFTA_R1_02205167 EFTA02721247 to prevent the toppling of the

ndidates have announced they will run. Most prominent include the following: Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister and current secretary-general of the Arab League. While popular for his Arab nationalist stances, he will have to overcome his association with the past regime, which has already emerged as a major

st. It's over: Enough of the nameless graves that whisper of horror, enough of the 20th-century police states in the 21st-century. Yes, it's over for Ben Ali and for Mubarak. It's over for Qaddafi, yes it is. How far it's over for the other Arab despots and autocrats, whether of the oxymoronic "republics"

significant air defense systems and no friends; it was relatively easy to construct a coalition of the (semi-)willing in the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League to oppose the man President Ronald Reagan once dubbed the "mad dog of the Middle East"' -- a tin pot and often bizarre dictator who opposed reform an

demonstrations sparked by the self-immolation of a twenty-six-year-old man who had been reduced to scratching out a living as a humble street vendor. Ben Ali, along with his hated wife and family, chose to go into exile before a single shot had been fired. In Egypt, if press reports are to be believed, the

gether. To be sure, Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali neither ran police states on the terrifying scale

an atmosphere conducive to negotiation and agreement, including by intensifying efforts to advance coexistence and normalization of relations between Arab League members and Israel. A creative and courageous approach to leveraging the Palestinian initiative will not end the conflict. But it could make it far m