Blog

  • 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.…

    Read more »


  • 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]

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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:

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • Doctors Against Genocide

    The Guardian reports in “‘No one should act surprised,’ says UN expert who warned of starvation in Gaza last year.” The piece quotes Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food: “Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no…

  • “Historic” $100K Settlement from University of Maryland for Unlawfully Suppressing Pro-Palestinian Student Speech

    The group has just announced a “historic victory. … The university has now agreed to a $100K settlement, the largest ever for pro-Palestine student speech known in the U.S. But this isn’t just about the money. It’s about forcing institutions to recognize that Palestinian voices cannot and will not be silenced.”

  • Palestinian Women on Hunger Strike to Demand Israel Return Body of Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Settler

    “More than 60 Palestinian women have launched a hunger strike to demand Israel return the body of a peace activist killed by an Israeli settler last week in the occupied West Bank. The body of Awda Hathaleen, who was shot and killed on Monday as Israeli settlers moved in to bulldoze his village, is still…

  • Preventing Criticism of Israel by Defining It as Antisemitic

    “In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a group of 35 mostly European countries, drafted what it called a working definition of antisemitism. The Alliance had been founded in 1998 to promote Holocaust education and, in its own words, to ‘strengthen governmental cooperation to work towards a world without genocide.’ All too sadly, right now, its definition…

  • Nuclear Threats 80 Years After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    “While we have succeeded in preventing the direct use of nuclear bombs since World War II, Daniel Ellsberg and others have highlighted that the U.S. government has used nuclear weapons repeatedly since 1945, like a thief uses a gun. It doesn’t have to detonate the weapon over a city, simply threatening to do so achieves a strategic purpose.”

  • ​LGBTQI+ Communities at Greater Risk of Losing Healthcare Access 

    While anti-trans and anti-DEI legislation is making it harder for a wide range of Americans to access healthcare, new survey findings show that LGBTQI+ people are at greater risk of losing access to healthcare under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

  • Two-State Rhetoric Used as “Cover” for Israel’s Genocide and Continuing the Occupation?

    Many media outlets have been reporting on Saudi Arabia and France holding a conference at the UN for “recognising Palestinian statehood.” This narrative is scrutinized in an in-depth video with Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada: “UK, France, Canada ‘recognizing Palestine’ to cover up support for Israel’s genocide.” 

  • Ralph Nader: “Palestinian Holocaust,” 500,000 Dead

    “You can’t have a tiny enclave, the size geographically of Philadelphia, with 2.3 million people, have 170,000 tons of bombs, all kinds of artillery, sniper fire, denial of food, water, medicine, health care, all kinds of infectious diseases, destroying homes, apartment buildings, markets, religious institutions, educational institutions, anything that stands, anything that moves — 75…

  • Judge in Epstein Case Has Financial Conflicts of Interest

    Judge Loretta Preska “through her husband’s law firm” has “connections to a number of other financial institutions tied to Epstein, throwing an even darker shadow on her prior sealing of these documents.” Preska’s spouse is Thomas Kavaler, “a fifty-year veteran of Cahill Gordon & Reindel.” The firm “defended Deutsche Bank after it was sued by…

  • “Healthcare Deserts”Have Worsened Since 2021

    A new report from GoodRx finds that healthcare deserts––areas that lack adequate access to and infrastructure for healthcare services––exist in about 80 percent of counties in the United States. Nearly 60 percent of counties have more than one type of healthcare desert, and roughly one in three Americans are affected by healthcare deserts. Pharmacy deserts…

Mastodon