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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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  • Korea Still at War 60 Years Since Armistice

    “On July 27th, there will be official, state-sponsored commemorations of the Korean War, mostly honoring veterans who fought in the war. What is problematic, however, is it fails to recognize the three million Korean lives lost in the three-year war and the ongoing lives still threatened due to the unended Korean War, largely in the…

  • Bill to Cut NSA Funding Narrowly Fails, Sparks Rare Congressional Debate

    “Given the combined opposition of the GOP leadership in the House and the Democratic establishment in the White House, it is remarkable that a band of conscientious members of Congress could find common cause across the partisan aisle and nearly win a surprise vote to de-fund the NSA through the defense appropriations process. With members…

  • Bradley Manning Trial Ending: “Criminalizing Leaks to the Press”

    “During oral argument on July 15, Manning’s defense attorney, David Coombs, declared the only way this offense makes sense is if there is an ‘intent requirement.’ It has to be there to ‘avoid the very slippery slope of basically punishing people for getting information out to the press, to basically put, I guess, a hammer…

  • Economy: Picking Fed Chair; Minimum Wage Same for Four Years

    “I want my employees concentrating on our customers, not worrying how they will afford to pay rent or put food on their own table. We’ve paid our employees more than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour from the day we opened in 2010, and have never regretted that decision. In fact, it’s helped our…

  • Administration Attacks on Free Press: Succeeding Where Nixon Failed?

    “Asking courts to treat journalists as criminals under the Espionage Act has only been asserted once before Holder started using it. President Richard M. Nixon used it against New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, who obtained the Vietnam archives from Daniel Ellsberg. Following the Pentagon Papers case, Nixon convened a grand jury to indict Sheehan…

  • Summers for Fed Chair? “Great Gift to the Mega-Banks”

    “Barack Obama, I am told, is on the brink of making a terrible mistake by appointing Lawrence Summers as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. That sounds improbable, since Summers is a toxic retread from the old boys’ network and a nettlesome egotist who offended just about everyone during his previous tours in government.…

  • Military Contractor Resigns in Impassioned Protest: “I Hereby Throw Down My Rifle”

    “I felt a lot of cognitive dissonance for the last two or three years. I knew what the truth was and what the consequences of our actions were. But I needed to make a living. … When [Edward Snowden] talked about how he had believed in the mission, joined after the Iraq war, and found…

  • Senate Bill’s Path to Citizenship a “Myth”

    “While the Obama administration continues to take the Spanish language airwaves and social media pushing reform and its benefits, the President and his mouthpieces, including Cecilia Munoz, continue to blatantly lie, saying that administrative relief is outside of executive purview. In the meantime, deportations and detentions, already at record highs, continue. “The only communities that…

  • 2,500 California Prisoners Remain on Hunger Strike Over Long-term Solitary Confinement — Without Even a Window

    “We are in our fourth day and our keepers have remained true to form, because on [Thursday, July 11] they came and kidnapped my [cellmate] and took him to hell row. Hell row is an even more oppressive number of cells used as further sensory deprivation and torture for those already in prolonged isolation. They,…

  • Church, Rights Groups Sue NSA Over Spying

    “The First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles has a proud history of working for justice and protecting people in jeopardy for expressing their political views. In the 1950s, we resisted the McCarthy hysteria and supported blacklisted Hollywood writers and actors, and we fought California’s ‘loyalty oaths’ all the way to the Supreme Court. And in…

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