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  • Uprisings: Online Resouces

    With protests continuing, here is a partial list of online resources: For Libya: #Feb17; CNN’s Ben Wedeman; @EnoughGaddafi; For Bahrain: #Feb14, @OnlineBahrain; For Yemen: #Feb3; @JNovak_Yemen; Palestinian: #Mar15 Gulf: @dr_davidson, @tobycraigjones For Saudi Arabia: on Twitter: #Mar11; Webpages and blogs: rasid.com, ysoof.com/blog/?p=242, saudiwoman.wordpress.com, alasmari.wordpress.com, saudijeans.org To translate: translate.google.com Based in the U.S., but with extensive contacts…

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  • “A New Bipartisan Consensus Against Low Income People”

    The president’s budget is a prosaic austerity plan that inflicts disproportionate pain on low income Americans. Fundamental questions about the costs of war and the fairness of tax cuts for the rich have been avoided by the decision to narrowly target non-security “discretionary” spending to bear the weight of deficit reduction. It used to be…

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  • Challenges for Change in Algeria

    Tunisia and Egypt are relatively centralized states, Algeria not so, neither politically, nor culturally, nor geographically. Historically, the interior has been difficult to control, and there is no guarantee that the rest of the country would rally to the protests taking place in the capital as in the case of Egypt. The Algerian regime is…

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  • “Mubarak has fallen. The regime didn’t”

    CAIRO — Mubarak has fallen. The regime didn’t. We still have the same cabinet appointed by [Mubarak]. The emergency state is still enforced. Old detainees are still in detentions and new ones since the 25th of January remain missing. There is no public apology for the killing. We hear several executives are being prosecuted, including…

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  • Time to forge new, democratic system

    CAIRO — Last night, February 11, Cairo was the scene of what may well have been the largest street party in world history.  It was incredibly powerful and moving.  Of course, the night’s festivities marked both an end and a beginning. Now is the time for Egypt’s judges, other legal professionals, diplomats, other negotiators, intellectuals,…

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  • Our Man in Cairo

    With Mubarak’s departure, the focus now falls on his chosen successor, Omar Suleiman. According to a classified American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Suleiman was Israel’s pick to succeed Mubarak. But there’s little doubt that he was also the choice of the United States, or at least of one particular American agency with which he…

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  • Online Resources on Egypt and Beyond

    With protests against the Egyptian regime continuing, here is a partial list of resources: A critical Facebook page is “We are all Khaled Said” — also see the associated webpage elshaheeed.co.uk. (For background on Khaled Said, see IPA news release.) See: egyprotest-defense.blogspot.com; live updates at guardian.co.uk; Al-Jazeera English live blog and video, or via YouTube:…

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  • Hungry Gazans Feed Egyptian Troops

    RAFAH, Feb 9, 2011 (IPS) – Mustapha Suleiman, 27, from J Block east of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, crosses through gaps in the iron fence on the border carrying bread, water, meat cans and a handful of vegetables for Egyptian soldiers stationed on the other side. [See at Inter Press Service]

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  • Egypt’s military-industrial complex

    With US-made tear gas canisters fired on protesters in Cairo, Washington’s role in arming Egypt is under the spotlight In early January 2010, Bob Livingston, a former chairman of the appropriations committee in the US House of Representatives, flew to Cairo accompanied by William Miner, one of his staff. The two men were granted meetings…

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  • Uprising Pays Off -– Sort of

    Today I went to a town only 23 kilometers south of Tahrir Square. The plan was to see if the 11-day uprising in Egypt has produced any benefits so far – just by way of finding something different from the insecurity and chaos in Cairo. Kirdasa, a small town known for its flower nurseries and…

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  • Pentagon Contractors Cashing in on the Ukraine Crisis

    [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.’ …

  • Future of Covid-19 Vaccine Patent Waivers Is in Doubt

    More than a year after the first Covid-19 vaccines went into use, only 15 percent of people in low-income countries have received a single dose of the vaccine, and no agreement has been reached on any proposal for intellectual property waivers for the vaccines. Tahir Amin, the cofounder of an organization attempting to reshape patent…

  • U.S. Senate: Prosecute Russia War Crimes, not Ours

    MARJORIE COHN, [email protected], @marjoriecohn Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She just wrote the piece “After Undermining International Criminal Court, U.S. Now Wants It to Charge Russians,” which states: “Although the United States has tried mightily to undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it…

  • NATO, Russia and Nuclear Threats

    Amid warnings from Russia that they will increase force in the Baltic Sea if Finland and Sweden join NATO, Greg Mello, executive director of the nuclear disarmament and environmental protection advocate Los Alamos Study Group, said: “Let us hope that mature voices in Sweden and Finland can dial back these impulsive responses we are seeing…

  • Key Covid Coverage Ends as Federal Funds Run Dry

    Last month, uninsured people lost access to free Covid-19 tests and treatments after the end of the Health and Resources Administration’s Covid-19 Uninsured Program. Dr. Adam Gaffney says that “the uninsured will now be deterred from obtaining Covid-19 care or treatment––which could contribute to viral spread, or worsen outcomes by delaying care for these vulnerable…

  • Indoor Air Quality and Covid: A Federal Response Finally Gains Momentum

    The White House’s recent emphasis on improving indoor air quality to reduce virus transmission has been praised by scientists, including Linsey Marr and Jose-Luis Jimenez. They argue that at the beginning of the pandemic, major public health agencies like the CDC and WHO failed to communicate that the spread of the virus is significantly driven…

  • Networks Covered the War in Ukraine More than the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

    “’Astonishingly, the two peak months of coverage of the [2003] Iraq war each saw less saturated coverage than last month in Ukraine (414 minutes in March of 2003 and 455 minutes in April)…'”

  • Protests Rock Pakistan Following Imran Khan Charging U.S. Behind His Ouster 

    While the world’s attention is understandably focused on the crisis in Ukraine, equally grave developments are taking place elsewhere. Perhaps the most consequential — and underreported — is a regime-change operation underway in Pakistan…”

  • War Is Not an Excuse to Ignore Climate Change

    “The government should place caps on the numbers of barrels of oil, cubic feet of gas, and tons of coal allowed out of the ground and into the economy annually. Those caps would be ratcheted down quickly, year by year, until extraction rates and therefore greenhouse-gas emissions were driven close to zero.”

  • Ukraine and International Law: Precedents of Permissibility

    Alfred de Zayas, Professor of Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and former UN Independent Expert on International Order, said today, “Undoubtedly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated article 2(4) of the UN Charter, but there were ‘precedents of permissibility’ established by NATO countries through their aggressive wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria…

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