instigated by Twitter, Facebook and other social-media services, but they certainly helped it gain momentum. "The internet is an intensifier," says Marc Lynch of George Washington University, a noted scholar of the protest movements in the region. In the course of just a few years digital technology has b

d. Shater's entry into the Presidential race just introduces one more wild card into this loaded deck. At least Egyptian politics won't be boring. Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. The Daily-News Egypt Al-Shater nomination s

rs to plan for a post-Taliban Afghanistan? And does this mean revisiting Russia's offer to broker talks between Assad loyalists and the opposition? Marc Lynch has argued that "more could be done to plan for a post-Assad future and to communicate to terrified Syrians sitting on the fence that they have a p

esident "must learn to live with a certain amount of criticism." Before going any further, let me stipulate that I agree with my colleague and pal, Marc Lynch, who has pointed out that because Egypt is so polarized that whatever Morsi, the FJP, and the Brothers do, someone is going to see it as sinister.

mic state. Sobriety militates against such final or definitive conclusions, however. Indeed, George Washington University Arab-politics specialist Marc Lynch offered a sage tweet-length rule of thumb for analyzing Egyptian political developments: "It's never as bad as its seems on Twitter." Power in Egy