The Arab Spring (Arabic: الثورات العربية‎ al-Thawrāt al-ʻArabiyyah; literally the Arabic Rebellions or the Arab Revolutions) is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010. To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia,Egypt,Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria,Iraq,Jordan,Kuwait, and Morocco; and minor protests have occurred in Lebanon,Mauritania, Oman,Saudi Arabia,Sudan, and Western Sahara, as well as clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011 and protests by the Arab minority in Iranian Khuzestan. Weapons from the Libyan civil war stoked a simmering rebellion in Mali, and the consequent Malian coup d'état has been described as "fallout". The sectarian clashes in Lebanon were described as a direct result of the Syrian uprising and hence the regional Arab Spring.

The protests have shared techniques of mostly civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Seth G. Jones (born October 1972)^{[citation needed]} is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation specializing in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, with a particular focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and al Qa'ida.

Seth G. Jones is presently senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he worked from 2003 to 2009.

He served as the representative for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations in 2010, and in 2011, as a plans officer and advisor to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan).

From 2002-2009, he was Adjunct Professor, Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, where he taught classes on "Counterinsurgency" and "Stability Operations."

He has also served as Adjunct Professor, Center for Homeland Defense and Security, United States Naval Postgraduate School, since 2005.

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War. He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005. In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.

Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991. Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech. Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.

Robert Fisk (born 12 July 1946) is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Fisk holds more British and International Journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent.

The New York Times once described Robert Fisk as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain." He reported the Northern Ireland troubles in the 1970s, the Portuguese Revolution in 1974, the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A vernacular Arabic speaker, he is one of few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, and did so three times between 1994 and 1997. His awards include being voted International Journalist of the Year seven times.