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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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  • U.S. Attacks Church of Nativity Designation by UNESCO

    Sites added today by UNESCO to its “List of World Heritage in Danger” include the Church of the Nativity, believed by Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus. UNESCO statement can be found here. The U.S. and Israeli governments attacked the move. Rev. MITRI RAHEB, mraheb at diyar.ps Currently at Yale University, Raheb is senior…

  • Roberts Upholds “Obamacare”: Corporatists United?

    CLARK NEWHALL, clark.newhall at health-justice.org, @cnewhall Executive director of Health Justice, Newhall is a doctor and a lawyer. He said today: “Interestingly, it was Roberts who voted to save Obamacare from going down in flames. … The divide is not between liberal and conservative so much as it is between corporatists and everyone else. The…

  • Whistleblowers on Assange, Manning, “Absurd” Secrecy, Leaking and Assassinations

    The Guardian reports on “A letter signed by leading U.S. figures in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s application for political asylum in Ecuador has been delivered to the country’s London embassy.” Among those who signed the letter were Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover. The letter, organized by Just Foreign Policy,…

  • Rwanda Denies Sponsoring War Criminals in Congo; U.S. Charged with Covering Up at U.N.

    Today, BBC reports: “Rwanda’s foreign minister has angrily denied reports that her country is backing an army mutiny in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.” Last week, Reuters reported: “U.N. experts have evidence Rwanda’s defense minister and two top military officials have been backing an army mutiny in the east of neighboring Congo…” Also last week…

  • “Show Me Your Papers”-Based Immigration Policy

    MARGARET HU, mhu at law.duke.edu Hu is an assistant professor at Duke Law School. She just wrote a piece titled “Arizona v. U.S. & SB 1070: Baking Discrimination Into Immigration Policy” on the American Constitution Society blog, which states: “In Arizona v. U.S., the Supreme Court only upheld Section 2(B) of the highly controversial Arizona…

  • Supreme Court: Money in Politics Doesn’t Matter; Montanans Disagree

    In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively struck down Montana’s 100-year-old law that banned direct corporate political campaign spending in state and local elections. The court reversed a Montana Supreme Court ruling. See: Supreme Court Upholds Citizens United; Tightens Corporate Stranglehold on Campaign Finance. JEFF MILCHEN, jeff.milchen at gmail.com Milchen is the…

  • “Tragic Week in Paraguay”

    AP is reporting: “Ousted Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo fought back Sunday against the politicians who engineered his dismissal, setting up an alternative government and pledging to upstage Paraguay’s new leaders at an upcoming regional summit.” KREGG HETHERINGTON, krether at gmail.com Professor at Dalhousie University in Canada and author of Guerrilla Auditors: Transparency, Democracy and Rural…

  • 40th Anniversary of Title IX: Not Just Sports

    Title IX was signed on June 23, 1972 by President Richard Nixon and became law on July 1, 1972. JOANNE SMITH, jsmith at ggenyc.org Smith, founder and executive director of Girls for Gender Equity, Smith said today: “I benefited from Title IX’s opening up college athletics as many women and girls did, but that’s a…

  • Earth Summit: Questioning the “Green Economy”

    The Miami Herald reports: “More than 50,000 people and representatives of more than 120 countries gather in Rio de Janeiro for the opening of the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development. Topics include the destruction of the rain forest, vanishing coral reefs, land grabs, the need for food security, clean water, the role of women in…

  • Assange’s Asylum

    Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers (top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War) today signed a petition calling on Ecuador to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ellsberg stated: “Political asylum was made for cases like this. Freedom for Julian in Ecuador would serve the…

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