Discovering MENA and other thoughts

Syria officially opened its presidential campaign on Sunday May 11th, and the cities and towns under the regime's control are filled with billboards and posters presenting portraits of President Bashar Al-Assad. Others, such as the ones hung in Thawra Street in the center of the capital, show either his portrait dressed in a grey suit and blue shirt or the Syrian flag overlaid with the word "together" and the President's signature. In Damascu's Sabaa Bahrat neighbourhood, one billboard proclaims: "We won't close our eyes until we have said yes to the ophthalmologist" - Assad is an eye specialist by training - "We vote for you, 2014". Elsewhere, posters read "our Bashar, we will not accept a president other than you. We have chosen you, you have our loyalty". The campaign is also flooding online media with messages of support for Assad - by the first morning, the Facebook account had garnered 65,000 likes and the Twit...

Last 25 January (coincidentally, a key day for Egypt's revolutionaries), Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC) wound up after more nearly a year of on-off discussions. The talks, for six hours a day, five days a week in normal situations, started last March and were a key part of the 2011 murky agreement brokered by the UN and the Gulf Co-operation Council that saw long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down after 33 years in power at the peak of a momentous uprising that many feared it could have spread to other Gulf territories. Let's not forget that Yemen flanks major shipping lanes vital for both the West and Gulf countries.