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  • 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.…

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  • 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]

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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:

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  • 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…

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  • Israeli “Ceasefire” Kills 100 Children; Plans to Resume Full Onslaught

    The Times of Israel reports this week: “The IDF has drawn up plans to launch renewed intensive military operations in Gaza in March, with an offensive targeting Gaza City aimed at pushing the Yellow Line ceasefire demarcation west toward the coast of the enclave, further expanding the IDF’s control of the territory, an Israeli official and an Arab…

  • Trump’s Threats to Iran: What’s the Record of “Humanitarian Intervention”?

    “President Donald Trump is threatening military intervention against Iran, based on reports that the Iranian government has massacred thousands of innocent demonstrators. However, we should not forget that previous U.S. interventions have also been justified by reports of mass atrocities, which later proved greatly exaggerated or fabricated altogether.”

  • Israel and ICE

    “Silicon Valley firms supplied the software and computing infrastructure that enabled Trump’s policies. Companies like Babel and Palantir entered into contracts with ICE in 2015, becoming the bread and butter of ICE’s surveillance capacities by mining personal data from thousands of sources for government authorities, converting it into searchable databases, and mapping connections between individuals…

  • Attack on Venezuela: Illegal, Based on Lies

    “ After months of propaganda claiming Maduro is the head of the dangerous drug-smuggling cartel, the U.S. government has admitted it was all a ruse in order to kidnap a sitting head of state.”

  • “Dismal” Democratic Leadership Boosts GOP’s Midterm Prospects

    Writing in The Guardian last week, Solomon asserted that the party’s governing body, the Democratic National Committee, “is now replicating the kind of tacit disdain for rank-and-file Democrats that fueled the 2024 catastrophe. … A party unable to publicly examine its own failings is unlikely to climb out of the rut that proved so helpful…

  • Venezuela

    GABRIEL AGUIRRE, [in Venezuela], [email protected], @WorldBeyondWar    Aguirre is Latin America Organizer for World BEYOND War.  STEVE ELLNER, [email protected], @sellner74    Ellner is a retired professor at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. He is now an associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives. DAVID SWANSON, [email protected], @davidcnswanson    In 2023, Swanson wrote the book The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace it With. His articles…

  • U.S. Strikes Venezuela

        “U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims about the illegal drug trade regarding both Venezuela and over 100 people thus far killed in boats with U.S. missiles from drones are without evidence and widely considered not even plausible.” See full statement and link to more resources.

  • Israel Suspends Aid Groups: “Suffering Easier to Overlook”

    In testimony at the U.N. Security Council last year, a Doctors Without Borders representative said the group is afraid Israel will punish his colleagues as a result of his talking about Israeli war crimes.

  • Netanyahu Meets Trump for Fifth Time this Year

    “Benjamin Netanyahu is arriving in the United States with a familiar list of demands. As NBC News has reported, Netanyahu plans to press Donald Trump for U.S. backing for another round of war with Iran, now framed around Iran’s ballistic missile program. This comes after Trump has repeatedly declared Iran’s nuclear program destroyed, a claim…

  • Grant Terminations at the American Academy of Pediatrics

    According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration has “terminated seven grants totaling millions of dollars to the American Academy of Pediatrics, including for initiatives on reducing sudden infant deaths, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome and identifying autism early.” The Department of Health and Human Services is trying to justify  these cuts based…

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