Blog

  • 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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  • Hoh on Afghan War Lies

    “For more than four decades Afghans have suffered in a civil war that the United States has been integral in and responsible for. Prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1979 the U.S. started supplying revolutionary Islamic forces in Afghanistan to create chaos to force the Soviet Union to invade, ‘in order to…

  • Terrorism Watch List Ruled Unconstitutional: Interviews Available with Journalist on the List

    “The Terrorist Watch List, used to keep some people from flying (the No-Fly List) as well as to harass as many as a million people not deemed threats to air safety, but considered somehow ‘linked’ to terrorism, was ruled unconstitutional. The judge found that the lists maintained by the FBI — both the No Fly…

  • Biden’s Escalating Iraq War Lies

    “Scott Ritter, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, noted just prior to the hearings, ‘For Senator Biden’s Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions — and demand hard facts — concerning the real…

  • “People are fed up with the Americans and Danab …They are killing without excuse”

    “As Danab [U.S. trained militia] and the United States make headway in Lower Shabelle, they have become the subject of more and more accusations of civilian casualties and arbitrary arrests. Mahat Dore, a member of Parliament based in Marka, a main town in Lower Shabelle, has recorded six incidents in which civilians were killed and…

  • Climate and “How the World Breaks”

    “Miami dodged catastrophe in the form of Hurricane Irma two years ago. Fortunately, the city has now avoided the kind of tragedy that Dorian inflicted on the Bahamas. More such rolls of the dice are coming, but I would not expect Dorian to cool down Miami’s developers any more than Irma did. The fatalist logic…

  • Adam Schiff Trying to Empower Barr in Targeting Protests

    “The ‘Confronting the Threat of Domestic Terrorism Act,’ which Schiff introduced last week, would dangerously expand the types of crimes that the federal prosecutors could charge as domestic terrorism if the Attorney General certified they were intended to intimidate a civilian population or influence government policy. Protesters, by their nature, attempt to influence government policies.…

  • Jews’ Loyalty to Israel: Trump’s Echo of Balfour Declaration

    “For some American Jews, anti-Zionism has been motivated by recognition of damage to the rights of Palestinians. The place of Jews in America is finally being impacted by the question of whether the State of Israel, the ‘Jewish state,’ is in any sense our country.”

  • Amazon: “Global Emergency” 

    “Now that the world is finally paying attention, it’s important to also understand that governments and companies around the world are emboldening Bolsonaro’s toxic policies when they enter trade agreements with his government or invest in agribusiness companies operating in the Amazon.”

  • Why is the Amazon Burning? 

    “The international community needs to send a strong message to the far-right government in Brazil because its policies are stimulating unprecedented environmental destruction in the Amazon, with dramatic consequences to climate change around the world. Destroying the Amazon to open space for agribusiness will not bring economic development to Brazil because [its] agricultural system is…

  • What “Conflating Advocacy for Palestinian Rights with Hatred of Jewish People” Spawned

    “Trump is a vile white supremacist. But every organization, politician (including Dems), and talking head who decided it was a good idea to weaponize anti-semitism by conflating advocacy for Palestinian rights with hatred of Jewish people owns a tiny little piece of his comments.”

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