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.…

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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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  • CIA Cloud Over Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post

    “It’s all so basic. Readers of the Washington Post, which reports frequently on the CIA, are entitled to know — and to be reminded on a regular basis in stories and editorials in the newspaper and online — that the Post’s new owner Jeff Bezos stands to benefit substantially from Amazon’s $600-million contract with the CIA. Even…

  • First Commander: Guantánamo Should Never Have Opened

    “There is much that is remarkable in the recent op-ed by Guantánamo’s first commander, Michael Lehnert. It is not just a piece arguing we should close it already, but that it should never have been opened. Two passages are particularly striking. The first was the belief that the detainees would provide a ‘treasure trove of…

  • “Wrong on Ukraine”

    “But have the U.S. and Europe really done nothing to provoke Putin’s reactions? During these years, who, for example, expanded the West’s Cold-War military organization, NATO, to Russia’s borders, and still covets Ukraine and Georgia as members; bombed or invaded three of Russia’s international partners (Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya) and now threatens a fourth (Iran);…

  • * CIA Fingered Mandela * Cuba Aided in South African Liberation

    Nelson Mandela’s “arrest came as a result of a tip-off from the Central Intelligence Agency to the authorities. According to recent reports in the Johannesburg Star and on CBS News, Mr. Mandela was traveling to meet a CIA officer who was working out of the United States Consulate in Durban, the capital of Natal. Instead…

  • Israel, Apartheid and Boycott Movements

    Mbuli added: “Upon meeting with Palestine’s Yasser Arafat in 1990, Nelson Mandela said: ‘I sincerely believe that there are many similarities between our struggle and that of the Palestine Liberation Organization. We [South Africans and Palestinians respectively] live under a unique form of colonialism in South Africa, as well as in Israel, and a lot…

  • Is Sen. Feinstein Profiting From the Fire Sale of the Public’s Property and Art?

    “Towns and cities throughout our entire country are losing their historic post offices and often the New Deal artworks designed for them. The giant real estate company CBRE advises the USPS on what post offices to sell and then profits by representing both the seller and buyer.”

  • Volcker Rule “Result Will be the Worst of all Worlds”

    “The ‘Volcker Rule’ represents Glass-Steagall-lite. It cannot work because it avoids doing what Glass-Steagall did — creating a ‘bright line’ rule separating what was permissible from what was forbidden. The failure to simply repeal the repeal of Glass-Steagall and repeal the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (which created the regulatory ‘black hole’ for financial derivatives) demonstrates…

  • Beyond Honoring Mandela: What About U.S. Political Prisoners?

    “Today we mourn the death of Nelson Mandela, the South African freedom fighter who was incarcerated for his leadership in the armed revolutionary wing of the African National Congress. During the 28 years of his incarceration, Mandela defied his captors from his cell by preserving his humanity and compassion in the face of the brutality…

  • Mandela: Beyond the “Safe Character”

    “The mood here in South Africa is terribly somber. This was the day that everyone knew would come. … I happened to work in his [Mandela’s] office twice, ’94 and ’96, and saw these [economic] policies being pushed on Mandela by international finance and domestic business and a neoliberal conservative faction within his own party.”…

  • Inequality: TPP Fast Track, Fast Food

    “While Obama denounces inequality, the Obama administration is rushing to conclude talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping commercial pact with 11 Pacific Rim countries that implicates everything from the cost of our medicines to the safety of our food. The TPP also threatens to further widen the gap between rich and poor, as…

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