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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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  • State of the UN

    James Paul is the executive director of the Global Policy Forum. He said today: “Leaders from around the world have gathered in New York for the annual high-level meetings of the UN General Assembly, which begin today. For a week, motorcades wind along the avenues, police barricades tie up Midtown, security people in dark glasses…

  • U.S. Backs Terrorist Group, Making War with Iran “Far More Likely” After Big-Money Campaign

    Jamal Abdi is policy director for the National Iranian American Council and said today that the group “deplores the decision to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. The decision opens the door to Congressional funding of the MEK to conduct terrorist attacks in Iran, makes war with Iran far…

  • “In What Ways Did Standardized Tests Prepare You for the Job You do Today?”

    Isabel Nunez is associate professor at the Center for Policy Studies and Social Justice at Concordia University Chicago. She recently wrote the piece “Standardized Test Scores are Worst Way to Evaluate Teachers,” which states: “The way that CPS [Chicago Public Schools] plans to use test scores in teacher evaluation, referred to as value-added, is so…

  • Obama and Romney Quietly Backing Jobs-Killing Secret Pacific Trade Deal

    Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Lori Wallach said today: “While President Obama and Mitt Romney attack each other on China trade, both quietly support a massive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement that would greatly expand U.S. jobs offshoring, give Chinese firms a waiver to Buy American procurement policies and further erode the U.S.…

  • Fallout from the Chicago Strike: * Rally in D.C. * Testing

    Helen Moore is a parent from Detroit participating in a caravan and march to the Department of Education Thursday. Youth and parents from 18 cities have organized a “Journey for Justice” demanding a moratorium on school closings. The group states: “Federal ‘school improvement’ policies require districts to utilize one of four intervention models in low-performing…

  • Romney’s Class: “Dependent on Government Subsidies, Handouts and Protection”

    Available for a limited number of interviews, James S. Henry is lead researcher for the recently released report “The Price of Offshore Revisited” and former chief economist at the international consultancy firm McKinsey & Co. He said today: “The real story here ought to be the outrageous growth of inequality in America — and the…

  • Beyond the “Muslim Rage” Hype

    Kathy Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and travels regularly to Afghanistan. She said today: “On September 16th, 2012, at about 2:00 a.m., U.S./NATO forces called in an airstrike which killed eight Afghan women who were on a mountainside collecting wood for fuel. Villagers in the Alingar district of the Laghman province said…

  • After One Year: Future of “Occupy”

    Laura Gottesdiener is an organizer with Occupy Wall Street and author the forthcoming book A Dream Foreclosed: The Great Eviction and the Fight to Live in America. She said today: “After one year, Occupy has become a movement that exists both as a protest in the symbolic centers of neoliberal capitalism, and as a direct…

  • Chicago Strike and the Corporate Attack on Education

    Author of Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? Susan Ohanian said today: “The current corporate-driven assault on public education rises from the late 1980s when Arkansas governor Bill Clinton held hands with IBM CEO Lou Gerstner to forge America 2000 for President Bush the Elder. That policy, which came directly from a Business…

  • Getting Past Protest Disinformation

    Available for a limited number of interviews, Emad Mekay appeared on Al Jazeera English last night. A lecturer at Stanford University and an investigative journalism fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Mekay returned from Egypt a week ago after three months. While virtually all media were alleging that an Israeli American Jew was behind…

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