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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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  • China Cyber Report Reflects Tension — and Need to Demilitarize Internet

    “This tactic — hacking is actively pursued by the U.S. and China among others — needs to cease. Demilitarizing cyberspace must be a core goal for the Obama administration. As a global technological leader and first adopter, the United States is particularly vulnerable to the weaponization of the Internet; it’s time for the Obama administration…

  • Ten Years After Feb. 15 Global Protests, A New Call

    “We don’t just say ‘no’ to war — we say ‘yes’ to peace, we say yes to building economic and social systems that are not dominated by central banks and huge financial institutions. We don’t just say ‘no’ to war — we demand an end to massive resources being squandered on the military while billions…

  • If Minimum Wage Kept Pace with Productivity, it Would be $16.54

    “Congressional proposals to raise the minimum wage to above $10 per hour or President Obama’s call for a minimum wage of $9 per hour are well within the range of historical increases and would still leave low-wage workers behind reasonable historical benchmarks based on cost-of-living or productivity growth.”

  • Bahrain Repression Escalates on Second Anniversary of Uprising

    “Security forces in Bahrain clashed on Thursday with anti-government protesters in street battles that left at least one boy dead amid high tensions on the second anniversary of the uprising in the Gulf nation, activists said. The demonstrators also included groups chanting against talks aimed at easing the Arab Spring-inspired unrest in the country, showing…

  • SOTU: Obama Poses as Dove while Civilians Bombed in Afghanistan

    KATHY KELLY, [email] Just back from Afghanistan, Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She said today: “Obama is a ‘hawkish’ president who likes to sound ‘dovish.’ He spoke of ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and yet the Pentagon has already told the Afghan government that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan till…

  • SOTU: * Jobs * Equity * Climate

    “The content of the president’s state of the union regarding climate was un-presidential. Trying to resuscitate broken carbon markets that have not worked in a decade since they began in Europe is a recipe for climate catastrophe. The failure to assemble the growing litany of oil and energy executives that are already doing more than…

  • North Korea “Test”: Aggravated by U.S. “War Games” and “Pivot”?

    “The North Korean government is angry about “massive war games that the United States and South Korea [engage in] almost every year — one took place last week. And they see the United States and these war games as very hostile and as a threat to their sovereignty, as they put it.”

  • The State of the Union: Is Rule of Law in Peril or Is it No More?

    “Under each of the past two presidents, executive fiat, enabling legislative statutes and judicial formalism have combined to shred our Constitution and transform America from a ‘land of the free’ into a land that loudly proclaims freedom while denying it to our own people.”

  • Postal Service Crisis Brought on by Bizarre Law

    “The USPS’s financial crisis has primarily been caused by a congressional mandate, coming from the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, that the USPS prefund the next 75 years of retiree health benefits in just a decade, by 2016. This is something that is not required of any other federal government agency or private…

  • Degraded Postal Service Part of a “Manufactured” Crisis and a “Daylight Heist” of New Deal Art

    ‎”The USPS is custodian of post offices and art of extraordinary quality, but at the current pace of downsizing, all of its properties will soon be thrown onto the market and the U.S. will be without the public postal service mandated by the Constitution. The USPS announced last week that it will sell the central…

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