There is a scoop in the latest Paul Rogers column. He discovers that there are now two new, freshly stocked US carrier strike groups in the seas off Iran – an unpublicised and unusual deployment. He fears the next stage in what he predicted a decade ago would be a thirty-years war.

Kirsty Hughes launches an excoriating attack on the “democratic disgrace” of EU politicians. Not alone in having found her critical voice in 2012, she is joined by thirteen Hungarians - opponents of the Communist regime in the 1970’s -  who warn of a new dictatorship; while Tony Curzon Price argues that EU governments have been outsourcing what should be public political judgements to the credit rating agencies.

On our Arab Awakening page, the debate of the week is on western attitudes to Bahrain between resident expert, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen and Bahraini co-author Elham Fakhro, while Hasan Tariq Alhasan asks: are moderates being outflanked by extremists? The page is welcoming many first-time openDemocracy writers: Benedetta Berti, from Tel Aviv, on Hamas strategy; Karen Kramer on the possibility of Assad surviving in Syria; Joshua Jacobs on why the global media is failing democracy by ignoring street conflict in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, and former Guardian correspondent, Rory McCarthy, on radical Salafism in Tunisia. Reyhaneh Noshiravani explains why imposing oil sanctions on Iran could backfire and Richard Rousseau and Michael Doliner assess the threat of war against Iran, although unaware of the Paul Roger’s scoop.

For your entertainment, Meryl Streep’s performance as Thatcher gets Anthony Barnett to recall his own brief encounter with the Rusting Lady on the edge of her defenestration.

Tanmoy Sharma - another new voice, this time from the Northeast Indian state of Assam – condemns the threat of mega dams and the Indian media for denying the resistance publicity. But we are reminded of a haunting, now silenced, voice of an old friend of oD, Hrant Dink, as tens of thousands mobilise in his memory in Istanbul and we reprint his first article for us on the persistence of Armenia.

Links you won’t want to miss:

• The new voice of Brazil sings, Oh, if I catch you

• Hrant Dink murder trial closes

• The FreeSpeechDebate

• Protests against SOPA and PIPA

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