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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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  • Pakistan

    “President Donald Trump’s first tweet of the year concerned none of the other ‘usual suspects’ of international ‘rogue’ nations routinely targeted for the president’s wrath: North Korea, Iran, or a China, or a Venezuela. No, this tweet concerned one of the older scapegoats for America’s travails in the ‘Af-Pak’ theatre in the ‘war on terrorism’,…

  • Korea and Olympics: Opening for Dialogue?

    “If Bush had kept the Agreed Framework, if hardliners had not sabotaged the Six Party Talks, and if Obama had clarified the terms of the Leap Day deal, North Korea might not be the nuclear nightmare that grips the United States and its allies today.”

  • UN Vote on Jerusalem: U.S. as “Capo dei Capi”

    “Coverage of the UN Security Council does not disclose what is really going on in this secretive and despotic institution. Washington causes a stir when it casts a public veto such as the one on Jerusalem, but in fact it uses its veto power daily in private sessions and it regularly dictates Council action (or…

  • Evidence of Honduran Election Being Stolen

    “International media attention has glossed over the popular resistance in the streets of Honduras and the ensuing violent crackdowns and human rights violations committed by [government] forces. The voices of people and grassroots groups involved in the road blocks, protests, and resistance all over the country are being ignored.”

  • Tax Bill: Senators’ Special Tax Breaks, Duping Public

    “Senator Collins, in all of your years in politics, all your years of being an educated, intelligent woman, have you honestly still not figured out how to tell when you are being lied to? The idea that Mitch McConnell and your colleagues in the Senate are going to address your concerns with the tax bill…

  • Is the National Security Strategy Military Dominance?

    “There are two ways to look at Trump’s remarks on national security, noting, of course, that his language is both more Orwellian, and less polished than we have seen before from the White House. “The first is that getting past his words, Trumps’ actions on people overseas have not been much different than any of…

  • Sexual Harassment and Low-Wage Women

    “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the restaurant industry is the largest source of sexual harassment claims. In a national survey of 4,300 restaurant workers by the worker center Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, more than one in 10 workers reported that they or a co-worker had experienced sexual harassment. ROC says even this creepy figure…

  • Documents Show U.S. Violated Assurances to Moscow About Limiting NATO

    “The National Security Archive materials reinforce the point that Soviet — and subsequent Russian — leaders had major reasons to believe NATO expansion was not going to occur in the post-Cold War era. The bargaining surrounding German reunification involved not just diplomatic reassurances, on the American side, but a series of seemingly-significant steps to make…

  • Killing Net Neutrality: “Regulatory Capture by Commercial Interests”

    “Pai has displayed an utter disregard toward all voices other than those he values most: the very industries the FCC purportedly regulates. This isn’t deregulation; it is reregulation by giving internet service monopolies the power to censor online content and limit our access to the internet. History will not look kindly on this FCC.”

  • Nobel Peace Prize: Threats to Nuclear Ban Treaty

    “It is the first true multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty ever successfully negotiated. All prior multilateral nuclear treaties aim at preventing proliferation, leaving current arsenals untouched.”

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