As Amir Taheri writes, Bashar Assad isn't the only Near East Johnny One-Note:
Where do we go from here? Islamist groups are posing now that question in the murky space they inhabit on the margins of reality. It is asked in radical mosques, touched upon in articles published by fellow-travelers and debated in the chat-rooms of militant Web sites. Beyond the usual suggestions to hijack a few more jets or poison some Western city's drinking water, the movement appears to have run out of ideas....The biggest setback for the Islamists, however, is a shift of mood in the Islamic heartland. The elections in West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq; Lebanon's freedom movement; the beginnings of change in Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia — all have helped generate new interest in democratic reform.
Democracy: come on, everybody's doing it!
A CELL DOOR SWINGS OPEN: Via Robert Mayer, an unlawfully imprisoned Yemeni progressive — to whom attention was drawn and for whom a petition was signed — has been pardoned and freed.