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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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  • 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…

  • Drones in Yemen: “Lack of Accountability When Strikes Go Wrong and Civilians are Killed”

    “Unfortunately in Yemen it’s often unclear who carried out particular air strikes — CIA drones, U.S. military drones or aircraft, the Yemen air force’s own rather elderly planes and even Saudi jets all reportedly carry out bombing. It’s rare for the U.S. to acknowledge it carried out specific strikes. Local officials and eyewitnesses have claimed…

  • Bezos Buys the Post, Pulled Plug on WikiLeaks in 2010

    “As the commercial model of journalism is in free fall collapse, those remaining news media franchises have become playthings for billionaires, generally of value for political purposes, as old-fashioned monopoly newspapers still carry considerable influence. The United States went through this type of journalism at the turn of the last century and it produced a…

  • XKeyscore: What Is the Full Scope of NSA Spying?

    “The latest revelations of NSA domestic spying include new information about the government’s ability to intercept social network communications, email metadata and content, and other online content–all without a judicial warrant. “Beyond the particular details about XKeyscore … lies a more disturbing implication: neither the press, nor the public, nor even Congress have any idea…

  • Obama with Yemeni President, Kerry in Pakistan, and the Drones that “Threaten U.S. National Security”

    “U.S. leaders can only name 77 ‘senior al-Qaeda and Taliban officials’ that they have killed by their drone strikes, out of total kills of 3-5,000 civilians and low-level militants that they cannot even name. This amounts to a military pinprick, which must be weighed against the long-term strategic catastrophe of turning nuclear-armed Pakistan against the…

  • Medicare’s Birthday — Will Obama Cut Program?

    “Who is the most popular health insurer in America? Not Anthem Blue Cross. It’s Medicare. And what insurer is the most efficient? Medicare again, operating at only 1.4 percent overhead, while the private insurers strain to meet the Affordable Care Act maximum overhead of 20 percent. “While the Affordable Care Act struggles to be born,…

  • “Manning Deserves Nobel Peace Prize”

    “Tuesday’s verdict from a military judge does not diminish the huge moral stature of whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Next month, I will be proud to deliver a petition to the Nobel Committee in Oslo with a simple message from more than 100,000 signers: ‘I urge you to award the Peace Prize to Bradley Manning.’ “Thanks to…

  • Manning Verdict Today

    “The verdict in Bradley Manning’s trial is expected to be issued by the judge [Tuesday]. It also is the day that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa would like to see designated as National Whistleblowers Day because of the historic significance of July 30; in 1778, the first whistleblower protection law in America was passed. “That…

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