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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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  • Iran: A Repeat Ten Years After “Fixing” Intel on Iraq

    RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, http://raymondmcgovern.com ANNIE MACHON, [email protected], skype: annie.machon, http://www.anniemachon.ch Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI), McGovern is a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and CIA analyst. They just wrote a piece titled “Will Downing St. Memo Recur on Iran?” They…

  • Empty Anniversary: Minimum Wage Stuck as Poverty Climbs

    July 24 is the anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase to $7.25 in 2009. The minimum had been increased on July 24 on 2007, 2008 and 2009 and not since. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Rep. George Miller of California have proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.80 by 2014 in three…

  • Alexander Cockburn, “Our Voltaire”, Dies at 71

    JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, sitka at comcast.net Co-editor of Counterpunch with Cockburn, St. Clair said today: “Alexander Cockburn was the fiercest, funniest and most uncompromising political writer of our era. He excoriated the powerful, punctured the pretentious and championed the oppressed. He was our Voltaire. He taught two generations how to think, how to look at…

  • “In the U.S., It Happens Again and Again”

    YESHUA MOSER-PUANGSUWAN, yeshua at nonviolenceinternational.net A board member of Small Arms Survey, an international, independent research project. Moser-Puangsuwan was quoted in an Institute for Public Accuracy news release in 2007 following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech: “Other Western countries like Australia and the UK have one mass shooting, then institute policies on guns and…

  • Has the Military Budget Been Slashed? Is It Effective at Creating Jobs?

    The House is having a series of votes on military spending today. The Boston Globe reports today: “Congressional Republicans have begun a drumbeat of opposition to Pentagon cuts they agreed to last summer as part of the debt deal with President Barack Obama, and want to shift the burden of cuts to food stamps, school…

  • FEC Claims Missing Records on Key Funders a “Technical Problem”

    THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and contributing editor at AlterNet. PAUL JORGENSEN, pjorgensen at ethics.harvard.edu Jorgensen is a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He, along with Ferguson, recently wrote the…

  • Syria on Fire, and the U.S. and Russia Have “Turned up with Flamethrowers”

    CHARLES GLASS, charlesmglassmail2003 at yahoo.com A noted journalist, Glass was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent and recently wrote the pieces “The Country That Is the World: Syria’s Clashing Communities” and “Syria’s Many New Friends are a Self-Interested Bunch,” which states: “The Syrians are now surrounded by more new-found friends than a lottery winner. ……

  • Secret Pentagon Docs Reveal Pre-War Plans to Get Big Oil into Iraq

    Bloomberg reports: “Iraq’s crude production overtook Iran’s last month for the first time in more than two decades… The rising rate of Iraqi production comes as foreign investors such as ExxonMobil Corp. and BP are developing new fields and reworking older deposits.” GREG MUTTITT, dlee at thenewpress.com Currently touring the U.S., Muttitt (based in London)…

  • Laid Off Steelworker in Anti-Romney Ad Doesn’t Want Obama Either

    Donnie Box was featured in a Priorities USA Action ad outside a shutdown plant: “Romney and Bain Capital shut this place down. They shut down entire livelihoods. They promised us a health care package, they promised to maintain our retirement program, and those are the first two things to disappear. This was a booming place,…

  • As Disclose Act Fails in Senate, FEC Quietly Removes Files on Big Ticket Donors

    The Washington Post reports today: “The Senate failed Monday to advance legislation that would require independent groups to disclose the names of contributors who give more than $10,000 to independent groups for use in political campaigns.” The just-published piece “Revealed: Key Files on Big Ticket Political Donations Vanish at the Federal Election Commission” by Thomas…

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