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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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  • Manning Sentenced Today

    NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com USA Today recently published “Manning Deserves Nobel Peace Prize” by Solomon. He delivered a petition to the Nobel Committee of 100,000 people urging that Manning receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Solomon is founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org NATHAN FULLER, nathanlfuller at gmail.com, @nathanLfuller,…

  • “If We Cut Aid to Egypt’s Military, Would We Die?”

    “If you’re not following the debate about whether U.S. aid to Egypt’s military should be cut — as required by multiple, clear-cut U.S. laws — in the wake of the military coup that overthrew Egypt’s democratically elected president and the subsequent predictable massacres by the Egyptian military of people protesting against the coup, you’re missing…

  • Why Isn’t Beirut Bombing Called “Terrorist”? What’s Behind It?

    “On August 15, one day after the anniversary of the end of the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon, a car bomb exploded in a busy commercial street in the southern suburb of Beirut.” Masri notes the death toll is now at 24 with seven people missing. “This is the second car bomb to have been…

  • Media in Egypt Driving Polarization, Violence

    “Egypt is going through one of the bleakest moments of its modern history. Despite the paucity of accurate reporting on the attacks against the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-ins on Wednesday, there is enough evidence that these attacks must be condemned in the strongest of words. Although [ousted president Mohammed] Morsi’s supporters are not exactly non-violent it…

  • Manning Takes the Stand; Push for Nobel Peace Prize

    “There’s a cloud hanging over the Nobel Peace Committee,” Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction said on Monday, as he prepared to hand his 5,000-page petition to the committee. “‘In a sense, the Nobel Peace Prize at this point needs Bradley Manning more than Bradley Manning needs the Nobel Peace Prize … There has now grown…

  • * Clapper, Who Lied to Congress, to Lead Surveillance Review * Stop and Frisk

    “I also naively believed this was an effort to take up Ron Wyden and Mark Udall’s review of the program, which the rest of the Senate Intelligence Committee thwarted a year ago. … Nope! In the memo Obama just released [PDF] ordering James Clapper to form such a committee, those words ‘outside’ and ‘independent’ disappear…

  • Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down to Avoid “Being Complicit in Crimes Against the American People”

    “That a privacy-centric email service would shut down instead of disclose information about one of its users, as appears to be the case with Lavabit, speaks incredibly highly of the company, and reminds us that even in the face of a seemingly all powerful surveillance state, each of us can bravely refuse to submit. The…

  • DEA Using NSA Intercepts to Launch Criminal Investigations, Then Hiding It

    “Even beyond the larger systemic problem of insulating NSA surveillance from judicial review, criminal defendants whose arrest or case is built upon FISA evidence are now deprived of their right to examine and challenge the evidence used against them. “Taken together, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee a criminal defendant a meaningful opportunity to present…

  • Is Obama Further Privatizing Housing Market?

    “Let’s take a look, briefly, at the companies Obama proposes should form the backbone of the housing market. Morgan Stanley is currently embroiled in a lawsuit alleging lending discrimination in Detroit. UBS just paid $885 million to settle allegations it lied about the risks of mortgage-backed securities. Wells Fargo recently settled one lawsuit over discriminatory…

  • Bezos: Anti-Union, Privatizing Education?

    “Worker advocates claim that the low-pay temp jobs at the [Amazon] Chattanooga warehouse contribute to a disturbing trend of middle-class erosion. As Dave Jamieson of the Huffington Post reported earlier this week, Amazon employs a temporary staffing agency at the warehouse, Integrity Staffing Solutions, that advertises seasonal jobs at the warehouse with a starting pay…

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