The stand-off in Egypt continues. A sit in by supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi has been put on notice that they will be cleared out by force if necessary. The protesters for their part have…
As the world holds its breath, hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of protestors will take to the streets of Egypt’s big cities today in what has been widely billed in the international media as a…
Violence against female protesters was a terrifying hallmark of the unrest that led to the fall of the Morsi government. Local NGOs documented more than 100 reports of sexual violence, including rape…
In the past four weeks, a major political earthquake seems to have hit the Middle East, where three key regional constituencies: Iran, Qatar and Egypt, experienced more or less unexpected changes of leadership…
In the wake of the shooting of at least 51 supporters of former president Muhammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is calling for a popular uprising against the generals that…
When I took a walk past Cairo University this morning, the tanks were still there, while the Islamist camp were continuing their sit-in, though with strongly reduced numbers. At around 5.30pm the night…
These days all you need to be a revolutionary is a mobile phone and a grievance. Some see what is happening on the streets of Cairo as the ultimate expression of democracy - millions of people using social…
For the first time perhaps in all of Egyptian history, its citizens have chosen their own leader. The election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi as the president of Egypt is a major historical…
Symbols are important, but often deceiving. This is certainly the case of Hosni Mubarak, whose inexorable decline acted as a metronome for the Egyptian political crisis. In early 2011, Mubarak’s political…
Whatever the outcome of the Egyptian presidential runoff scheduled for 16-17 June, Middle Eastern electoral politics are now conforming to a remarkable rule. When elections are held in a free and fair…
In the face of the largest mobilisation Egypt has ever witnessed, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 12, 2011. Facing an unlikely coalition of disaffected youth, labour workers, Islamists…
After the overthrowing of dictator Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has had its first round of parliamentary elections, with two parties dominating the vote – the moderate Muslim Brotherhood and the religious conservative…
Recent days have seen a return to Cairo’s Tahrir Square by thousands of Egyptians concerned by what they see as a delay by the ruling military council in implement full democracy in Egypt. With reports…
Social media provokes some of the most voluminous and heated responses in two key areas of contemporary society – democracy and privacy. Promoting the first and threatening the second, social media is…
The violence in Egypt involving Coptic demonstrators, military units and unidentified thugs shocked the country and rang alarms about prospects for transition to democracy. Egypt is going through a revolution…
The increasing spread of information and communication technology has changed just about every aspect of Australian society – except democracy. The opportunities to engage citizens in the democratic process…
In the euphoria following the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, the so-called “hero” of the revolution proclaimed: “Technology played a great role here. You know, it helped keeping…
The lives of millions of people in the Arab-speaking world are changing. Often for the first time, women and men have jumped, danced, kissed strangers and sung in the streets. There is talk of dignity…
Facebook, with more than 500 million members, has now reached superpower status. If Facebook were a country, its supporters often say, its population would rank behind only China and India. But there is…
We are living in extraordinary times. People are using social media to campaign for freedom from their governments, but their ideas are built on a much more powerful medium: literature. Protests have swept…