As the Arab Spring continues to challenge dictators, demolish old structures and ponder roadmaps for a better future, the US remains committed to its failed policies, misconceptions and selfish interests.

Arabs may disagree on many things, but few disagree on the fact that there is now no turning back. The age of the dictator, the Mubaraks and Ben Alis is fading.

A new dawn with a whole new set of challenges is upon us. Debates in the region are now concerned with democracy, civil society and citizenship.

The only Arab intellectuals who still speak of terrorism and nuclear weapons are those commissioned by Washington-based think tanks or a few desperate to appear on Fox News.

Put simply, Arab priorities are no longer US priorities, as they may have been when Hosni Mubarak was still president of Egypt.

Leading a group of "Arab moderates," Mubarak's main responsibility was portraying US foreign policy as if it was at the core of Egypt's national interest as well.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's first female prime minister did not give any cabinet positions to her Red Shirt parliamentary allies, despite their role in bringing her to power through their anti-coup insurrection last year which left 91 people dead.

The Red Shirts, officially known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, are now debating among themselves whether or not they have been ignored or exploited, or if they are in a stronger position as outsiders to challenge Thailand's new government if it does not heed their demands.

Newly elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, 44, appointed her cabinet on Wednesday (August 10).

Her choice for defense minister, retired Gen. Yuttasak Sasiprapa, appeared to ease the confrontation she and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, face from an antagonistic U.S.-trained military which toppled Mr. Thaksin in a 2006 coup.

"I am not going to create enemies, but will look after everybody like brothers. I will not take revenge on behalf of anybody," Gen. Yuttasak said.

Israel has always indicated that there is no partner for peace in its relationships with the Palestinian people. Refusing to be Enemies refutes that idea solidly through its investigation into the non-violent resistance movement taking place in Palestine and in Israel. It also clarifies the nature of the Palestinian resistance and the nature of what non-violence truly stands for. As cited from Mohammed Khatib, "what the state of Israel fears most of all is the hope that people can live together based on justice and equality for all."

As crashing economies and austerity measures slap ever more ferociously at the lives of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, the Western world, with all its hidden poverty and institutional racism, may continue to convulse.

The riots that broke out in London over the weekend and spread throughout Great Britain, triggered by the controversial police killing of a 29-year-old man, have sent shockwaves in all directions. Who knew things were so unstable, that Britain’s struggling neighborhoods were just one incident away from such destructive lunacy?

“On Twitter late last night, following the main bulk of the riots, I was astonished at the incomprehension generally expressed as to why they had occurred. There seemed to be an extraordinary lack of awareness that working class youth in Britain are being punished for the financial excesses of the banking collapse,” freelance British journalist Pennie Quinton wrote on Al-Jazeera.

Ohio Secretary of State John Husted has banned all minor political parties in Ohio from the ballot. In an August 5, 2011 letter written to the Libertarian Party of Ohio, Husted made it clear that his interpretation of the draconian Ohio House Bill 194, passed by the Republican-dominated legislature, means that all minor parties have lost their official statewide party status effective September 30, 2011.

In a bizarre twist, Husted wrote that the bill "...included laws related to the requirements minor parties will have to satisfy in order to gain ballot access."

In Husted's reading of HB 194, the Libertarian, Green, Socialist and Constitution Parties that have been on the ballot since the 2008 election will have to start over to gain ballot access that they already held under a federal court ruling. In a similar situation, then-Secretary of State Ted Brown left minor parties on the ballot in 1970 and 1972 rather than revoking their ballot access due to a new election law.