Blog

  • Mubarak, Army, U.S., Israel vs Egyptian People

    [As government forces have attacked peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square, Emad Mekay from Cairo reports] Mubarak is clearly backed by the Americans. He took some moves after speaking with Obama and a visit by a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner. Mubarak, the army, the Americans and the Israelis are clearly on one side.…

    Read more »


  • Unrest Spreads to Sinai

    A Bedouin youth casually spreads out a piece of cloth before a police headquarters in Sheikh Zwayyed town in Sinai, the vast desert area to the east of Cairo across the Suez. “I will leave when Mubarak leaves,” he says. [Full piece from Inter Press Service]

    Read more »


  • Chomsky: Strategic and Economic Objectives, Not Anti-Islamization, Drives U.S. Policy

    [While many are claiming that a central goal of U.S. policy is to minimize influence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Noam Chomsky contributed this to our blog] It is well-established, including the major scholarly literature, that the U.S. supports democracy if and only if that accords with strategic and economic objectives.  Following…

    Read more »


  • An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

    ————————————————————————————————————————— [To sign; for recent news releases on Egypt from the Institute for Public Accuracy] Dear President Obama: As political scientists, historians, and researchers in related fields who have studied the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, we the undersigned believe you have a chance to move beyond rhetoric to support the democratic movement sweeping…

    Read more »


  • Report from Cairo

    From Alex Ortiz in Cairo: “The army is beginning to come into Cairo … tens of thousands converged in midan al-gala’ coming from three different protest marches. Total communication blackout. Reports of senior police officers ordering their men to stand down and not beat or fire tear gas at protesters in Midan al-gala an hour…

    Read more »


  • Report on Latest from Cairo

    CAIRO, Egypt [11 p.m. local time] — 1-Some government media figures appear to be joining ranks with the protesters. Mahmoud Saad, a talk show host in the Egyptian state-run TV, has announced that he will no longer appear on TV starting tonight after he came under pressure from top government officials to report “untruths” about…

    Read more »


  • Police in Cairo Beating up Jounalists

    [From 9:28 a.m. ET]: Police started beating up journalists protesting outside the Press Syndicate in downtown Cairo. They beat up women journalists too who were screaming and crying for help. “Do not club women. Do not club women,” some of the men rushed to the police asking them not to target women. “You’ll make things…

    Read more »


  • From Alex Ortiz in Cairo

    [The Egyptian government has apparently block Twitter, Facebook (as of Wed. morn U.S. ET) and other internet tools, though apparently some people are able to get around such restrictions. Email from 8:45 a.m. ET:] Downtown Cairo today remains in a state of high alert. There are many security forces and plainsclothed policemen visible on every…

    Read more »


  • Video from Cairo

    Phone lines are intermittent and Twitter has reportedly been blocked in Egypt. Here is a live video feed: ustream.tv/channel/cairodowntown [update: ustream has been blocked, streaming now intermittently at livestream.com/cairowitness — further update, now at: www.justin.tv/cairowitness] Here is a YouTube video from earlier today:

    Read more »


  • Ukraine’s Assault on a Free Press

    In Ukraine, where media diversity is often defined by which powerful oligarch controls which TV station, one network, TVi — known for its independent investigative style — is under intense legal pressure, with its owner not part of Ukraine’s power circles. TVi faces a court hearing on Tuesday over a legal claim that the station’s…

    Read more »


  • Israel’s Apartheid: Attacking Those Who Speak Out

    Halper quotes Israeli leaders: “In 2007, Israel’s former education minister Shulamit Aloni wrote, ‘the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.'”… Tutu, in his last published piece, called on Biden to acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, writing: “there are few truths more critical to…

  • Long Covid: A New Report

    The Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center released a new report last week on long Covid. 

  • “Pretty Extreme”: CDC Decision to Loosen Universal Masking in Health Care Settings

    This week, the CDC issued an update to its masking recommendations. The agency no longer recommends universal masking in health care settings. Epidemiologist Justin Feldman says the change in guidance is “pretty extreme.”

  • Patents on 7 Out of 10 Top Drugs Set to Expire This Decade: What Next?

    Patents on 7 out of 10 of the 10 highest selling drugs in the U.S. are set to expire this decade, without urgently needed patent reforms, pharmaceutical companies will be able to delay those expirations––making it nearly impossible for biosimilar generic drugs to come on the market, shutting out competition, and keeping drug prices high. 

  • The CIA Just Invested in Woolly Mammoth Resurrection Technology

    “The embrace of this technology, according to In-Q-Tel’s blog post, will help allow U.S. government agencies to read, write, and edit genetic material, and, importantly, to steer global biological phenomena that impact ‘nation-to-nation competition’ while enabling the United States ‘to help set the ethical, as well as the technological, standards’ for its use.”

  • Explosions Cause Major Damage to Both Nord Stream Pipelines

    “The era of Russian domination of gas is coming to an end, an era marked by blackmail, threats and coercion,’ Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a ceremony for the pipeline”

  • CIA Spying on Assange Extended to Legal Team, Other Journalists, Activists

    In addition to violating the rights of a political, the story involves breaches of an embassy’s sovereignty and the surveillance of a range of journalists, human rights defenders, and politicians. Whether they were intentional targets or collateral damage in the CIA’s war on WikiLeaks, their surveillance, like that of Assange, remains an outrageous deprivation of…

  • Researchers Find Medical Debt Worsens Health Vulnerability

    A new study found medical debt among 18 percent of householders; a higher risk of acquiring medical debt fell to those without insurance as well as those with high deductible private insurance or Medicare Advantage. Medical debt also worsened social determinants of health––causing more food insecurity, inability to pay for housing and utilities, and eviction…

  • Ukraine War: Is Media Misreporting Facilitating Escalation?

    “The Western media description is completely misleading, exaggerating the significance of Kharkov region advances, while ignoring Ukrainian setbacks in Kherson and Donbas. Also, Western media completely ignore the profound casualties inflicted on Ukrainian forces, when the Russian allies suffered relatively few losses. On all of these fronts, Ukraine may have suffered 35,000 killed and wounded,…

  • Scrutinizing AFRICOM as Neocolonial Instrument

    “Despite its rhetoric, the purpose of AFRICOM is to use U.S. military power to impose U.S. control on African land, resources and labor to service the needs of U.S. multinational corporations and the wealthy in the United States. It also serves as a major boon to ‘defense’ contractors.

Mastodon