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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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  • Did U.S. War in Libya Boost Boko Haram in Nigeria?

    “Seemingly out of nowhere, Boko Haram burst into the awareness of people around the world as a shadowy group of Islamists with the ability to carry out audacious attacks that paralyzed the army of the most populous country in Africa. People now want to know the group’s origins, where they came from, why they are…

  • Obama and Holder’s ‘Assault on Freedom of the Press’

    “History demonstrates that the CIA’s interventions in Iran have sown additional seeds of enmity between that nation and our own. The revelations of James Risen about the CIA’s recent activities in that country are the price of honoring the freedom of the press, a freedom the U.S. rightly condemns Iran for suppressing. Rather than prosecute…

  • Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Double Standard

    “In his capacity as an HRW advocacy director, Malinowski contended in 2009 that ‘under limited circumstances’ there was ‘a legitimate place’ for CIA renditions—the illegal practice of kidnapping and transferring terrorism suspects around the planet. Malinowski was quoted paraphrasing the U.S. government’s argument that designing an alternative to sending suspects to ‘foreign dungeons to be…

  • Protest of FCC Net Neutrality Rules Gains ‘Momentum’

    “The divisions on the FCC Commission show that the people are having an impact. Now that these fissures are developing we need to increase the pressure. This is a critical moment and an opportunity for the people to set the agenda. We want the Internet reclassified as a common carrier so it can be regulated…

  • CIA’s Bin Laden Hunt Prompted Pakistan’s ‘Uncontrolled Outbreak’ of Polio?

    “In Karachi, the polio program that had been suspended last year [2012] remained so, and no more health workers went door-to-door in the most densely populated areas of the city. The lady health workers protested the suspension, the lack of security, the cessation of the task of inoculating Pakistan’s next generation. They tried to remind…

  • Left and Right Unite Against Pro-Drone Lawyer’s Judgeship

    “Barron co-authored the infamous Justice department opinion authorizing Obama’s murder of U.S. citizens. This is a total disgrace. If approved, we will have a murderer and a war criminal sitting on the U.S. First Circuit. … So here Barron and [his coauthor in the legal opinion Martin] Lederman deliberately and maliciously write a get-out-of-jail-free card…

  • Khamenei’s Balancing Act and U.S.-Iran Relations

    “The fact is Mr. Khamenei is trapped between a rock—the Iranian nation—and a hard place—his hardline supporters. The Iranian people elected President Rouhani in a landslide last June, and have been demanding uprooting of the vast corruption under Mr. Rouhani’s predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a functioning and robust economy, better relations with the West, and a…

  • Senate to Vote on Campaign Finance Reform Amendment

    “Senator Udall’s amendment bill will overturn the Supreme Court’s egregious rulings that have so threatened our democracy and the fundamental American promise of political equality for all. The Supreme Court has hijacked the First Amendment for the wealthy few, allowing them to drown out the voices of everyone else. We must now use our amendment…

  • The New Cold War and the Unquestioned ‘Establishment’

    “No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point. Considerable congressional and mainstream media debate, even protest, were voiced, for example, during the run-up to the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, more recently, proposed wars against Iran and Syria. This Cold War — its…

  • U.S. Military Buildup in Philippines and Asia Denounced

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