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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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  • “Kangaroo Court” “Railroading” Noted Peace Activists

    “These activists have spent varying amount of time in jail for having entered a major nuclear facility to nonviolently ‘symbolically disarm’ the massive nuclear arsenal stationed there…’But decisions of the judge have largely shut the door to the jury hearing anything about such defenses of ‘justification’ or ‘necessity.’ On Friday, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of…

  • Harvard and TIAA Involved in Destruction of Most Biodiverse Savannah in World

    “When financial actors like Harvard and TIAA invest in vast tracts of land in fragile ecosystem like Brazil’s Cerrado, they are promoting exactly the kind of agro-industrial development and corporate land concentration we need to move away from in the era of ecological collapse and climate apartheid. That their landholdings appear to be literally on…

  • Medicare for All: Tax Increases Not Needed

    “We’ve identified more than $300 billion in annual military savings alone that we could better invest in priorities like Medicare for All, working with the national grassroots movement, Poor People’s Campaign…Remaking our military as a truly defense-based institution, rather than a war machine and A.T.M. for private contractors, will require major changes. It’s a project that can’t…

  • Facing Decades in Prison, Activists of Conscience Confront “Culture of Death”

    “Nuclear weapons have been called the taproot in our civilization. They contribute to the cheapening of life and inform the other forms of violence. [What is new is that] a deep connection is coming to the surface, between climate change and nuclear weapons. What’s of particular interest to me in this [the Kings Bay action]…

  • * Chicago Strike * Education “Reforms”

    “In fact, many of these reforms have already proven to weaken the capacity of programs to prepare teachers for the diversity and equity challenges in our schools and communities. These problematic trends exemplify what’s happening in the larger realm of K-12 schools, where blame-and-shame detracts from the deeper systemic injustices that lie at the root…

  • Biden’s Syria Regime Change Lie

    Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed at the Tuesday night debate: “And with regard to regime change in Syria, that has not been the policy we change the regime. It has been to make sure that the regime did not wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people between there and the Iraqi border.” …”Joe…

  • Ellsberg: Plowshares Action Justified to Prevent Omnicide

    Today, Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the Pentagon Papers, said in a statement to accuracy.org: “I strongly endorse the action of civil resistance by the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 defendants who are now on trial for having ‘nonviolently and symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia.’ …”I believe that omnicide, the end…

  • Syria vs Erdogan?

    “The Syrian Kurds trusted the U.S. and are paying for it, as Iraq’s Kurds did in 1975 and 1991. They kept their lines open to Assad all along, so the new alliance was their only option. It remains to be seen whether Syria’s weaker, albeit battle experienced, army is a match for Turkey’s much larger…

  • The Coming Trial: Activists Facing Decades in Prison for Turning Weapons into Plowshares

    On April 4, 2018 — exactly 50 years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — seven Plowshare activists entered a major U.S. nuclear submarine base to nonviolently and symbolically disarm nuclear weapons…When they did the action, the activists held up signs: “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide” and “Nuclear Weapons: Illegal…

  • Taxes on Rich Plummet, Economic Growth Slows and More Are Left Behind

    “The tax burden of the wealthy — what they pay out in federal, state, and local taxes relative to their income — has plummeted over the last seventy years. In 1950 the wealthiest 400 families paid out 70 percent of their income in taxes, 47 percent in 1980, and just 23 percent in 2018…Nor has…

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