Turkish analyst, Nicholas Danforth, discusses the relationship of Turkey and the West. Is the West's increasingly loveless marriage with Turkey finally headed toward acrimonious divorce?

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently unveiled a new US initiative called Civil Society 2.0, a plan to provide grassroots organizations in the Middle East and North Africa with access to new digital technologies. The program will receive an initial budget of $5 million to dispatch digital and communications experts to the region to help civil society organizations blog, text, and build websites.

With the holiday shopping season already in full swing, scores of companies are taking advantage of the many benefits that social media outlets have to offer. Whether consumers are purchasing their products online or braving the crowds to visit the brick and mortar, retailers have far greater options than years past to engage customers and influence their purchasing decisions.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.  - Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad 

The ongoing debate over the "escalation" of activity in Afghanistan has only heightened fears that the country will become another Vietnam. This historical reference has haunted the Afghan war from its beginning, especially when coupled with the frequently invoked charge that a litany of previous empires faced defeat in region. Surely, critics claim, if we cannot learn from the past here, we are doomed to repeat it.