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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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  • Warren: “Which Side Are You On?”

    Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He recently wrote the piece “A Profound and Historic Question for Elizabeth Warren: Which Side Are You On?” and appeared on “Democracy Now!” this morning. Solomon wrote: “For much of the past year, in many hundreds of speeches and interviews, Warren has denounced the huge leverage…

  • New Report: Medicare for All Would Create Jobs While Freeing Up Workers

    The Economic Policy Institute just released a report: “Fundamental health reform like ‘Medicare for All’ would help the labor market.” The report finds that Medicare for All would: * “Lessen the income loss, stress, and economic shock of unemployment and job transitions by eliminating the loss of health care that accompanies job-loss. * “Support self-employment…

  • Biden Record: * Pro Wall Street, War, Incarceration * Anti-Anita Hill

    “The practitioners of bipartisanship conveniently gloss over the more evident reality: that the system is under sustained assault by an ideology bent on destroying the remnants of the New Deal to the benefit of a greed-driven oligarchy. It was bipartisan accord, after all, that brought us the permanent war economy, the war on drugs, the…

  • Barron’s: “Real Super Tuesday Winners” are Health-Insurance Stocks

    “Joe Biden, the former vice president, outperformed expectations in key primary states on Super Tuesday, setting up a rally in the stocks of the health-insurance companies threatened by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan. Shares of UnitedHealth Group (UNH) were up 8.9 percent in premarket trading on Wednesday, while shares of Cigna (CI) were…

  • Will Biden Get Serious Scrutiny?

    Branko Marcetic, author of the recently released book Yesterday’s Man: the Case Against Joe Biden, has written extensively about Biden’s congressional record for Jacobin, and corporate media bias against Sanders for In These Times. See links to his articles on the accuracy.org website.

  • Biden and Bloomberg Iraq War Lies — And Future Wars

    “Biden had been calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq since 1998, pushed the war authorization through the Democratic-controlled Senate, and abused his role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to suppress testimony by scholars, former U.N. inspectors, and other knowledgeable authorities opposed to the war. However, it is his support for the…

  • Joe Biden: “Yesterday’s Man”

    “Biden launched his 2020 campaign boasting about his liberal bona fides, and now stresses that he is a ‘proud’ and ‘lifelong Democrat.’ Yet not only did not become a Democrat until he was 27, for much of his career, Biden has run away from the ‘liberal’ label, telling the press in 1972 he was ‘not as liberal as most…

  • Debate Moderators Frame Questions to Define Acceptable Politics

    Julie Hollar, senior analyst for the media watch group FAIR’s Election Focus 2020 project, just wrote the wrote the piece “Debate Moderators Frame Questions to Define Acceptable Politics,” which analyzes how the corporate networks have dealt with the three most frequent topics: Healthcare, Military Intervention, and Electability.

  • Can Medicare for All Help Deal with Pandemics?

    “Having Medicare for All would encourage promptly seeking needed medical treatment for individuals with symptoms that may indicate a disease like coronavirus. This means that cases would be detected earlier, speeding treatment and epidemic control. Some candidates and commentators have argued that any method to achieve universal coverage would work. However, this misses the mark.…

  • Biden’s Record Serving Credit Card Companies

    While Joe Biden is continuously depicted as a friend of working people, the piece documents many aspects of his actual record, including: • “An earlier iteration [of the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act] had passed Congress in 2000 with Biden’s support, but President Clinton refused to sign it at the urging of…

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