“There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” This past year was a year of such weeks, and now the first anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park is just around the corner.

In Russia’s parliamentary elections on December 4, 2011, United Russia – the party of President-turned-Prime Minister-turned-current-President Vladimir Putin – won the majority of seats in the Duma, the Russian Parliament, amid cries (and video evidence) of widespread election fraud.

The situation in Cairo is changing daily. When Max posted it seemed as though Tahrir Square was emptying out and Mubarak’s wait-it-out strategy was sapping the will of the protesters.

After nearly two weeks of turmoil, it looks like Tahrir Square is starting to empty out. The Egyptian Revolution – if we can call it that – seems to be entering its inevitable second phase, the power political phase, where elites sit down at a negotiating table and wield the old images of the angry masses as bargaining chips during administrative transition.

Authoritarian regimes across the Middle East are atremble as popular revolution threatens to engulf a second country in the space of two months. Following the fall of the Ben Ali government in Tunisia, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have converged on major cities such as Cairo and Alexandria to protest a longstanding list of political and economic grievances that include an entrenched police state, one-party rule, endemic unemployment, and rising food inflation.