Discovering MENA and other thoughts

TIME Magazine proclaimed the "indignado" (the protester) as the person of the year back in 2011 . This was a gesture of recognition of the tremendous impact rebellious/revolutionary movements have had all over the planet: from Madrid to Wall Street, from Chile to China and, above all, in the Arab World, where scores of outraged youths took to the streets chanting their demands. They managed both to overthrow tyrants and to fascinate and inspire many amongst us. However, it seems that protesting, voicing people’s demands or disapproval of existing policies, has turned in several countries into an extreme sport as of lately. Two examples have notably caught our attention, two cases nearly nobody could instantaneously draw parallels about: Spain and Egypt. Two countries where two deeply controversial (anti) protests laws have been adopted during the last months. The "public safety" legislation (Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana) put through in Spain last November has al...

A key presidential election will take place in Iran this Friday 14 June. The last Presidential elections were held in 2009 and set themselves up as a turning point for democratic hopes all around the world, embodied by what many soon started calling the "Green Movement", in a country often dubbed "authoritarian" or even "dictatorial". Indeed, Iran’s elections have increasingly become more and more controlled by the regime since the 1997 vote, when Mohammad Khatami won over the Supreme Leader’s anointed candidate, a former parliamentary speaker. Likewise, in 2005, the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (the Revolutionary Guards) and the Basij (paramilitary volunteer militia to defend Khomeini´s intentions) are believed to have heavily intervened to ensure the incumbent President´s victory against former President and co-founding member of the Islamic Republic, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, just as he has been doing nowadays, was then see...

It seems May is one good month for uprisings... Maybe it´s the hotter weather, maybe it´s the hormones in the Spring, maybe it´s the need to escape from study of many university-enrolled who prefer fighting for their country over revising for their last exams... It happened in Paris in 1968, it happened in Argentina in 1810, it happened in Madrid in 2011... It is maybe happening now in Turkey.