Blog

  • 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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  • Bilking the Poor: America’s Poverty Taxes

    Multibillonaire Pete Peterson’s Fiscal Summit concluded on Tuesday with a stand for no-compromise austerity and Speaker of the House John Boehner laying out the case for massive spending cuts. Yesterday the Senate voted down budget proposals that would have slashed Medicaid, cut SNAP, voucher-ized Medicare, and shrunk most other domestic human needs programs. At the…

  • U.S. in Yemen: Escalating War, Stifling Speech

    AP is reporting: “Government troops and warplanes pounded al-Qaida positions in southern Yemen on Wednesday, killing at least 29 militants as part of a ramped up campaign against the group, military officials said.” El Asbahi is founder and director of the Human Rights Information and Training Center in Yemen. He said today: “The U.S. military…

  • Palestinian Hunger Strikers: “Fighting Ingrained Duplicity”

    Reuters is reporting: “Standing up to Israel through non-violent resistance can produce encouraging results, Palestinians said on Tuesday, after a prisoner hunger strike produced some Israeli concessions. “The deal under which some 1,600 Palestinian prisoners agreed on Monday to end a month-long fast against Israel’s prison policy was struck on the eve of Nakba (catastrophe)…

  • Standing Up to JPMorgan’s Dimon and “Hedginess”

    Stephany Griffith Jones is Financial Markets Program Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. With José Antonio Ocampo, and Joseph E. Stiglitz she co-edited “Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis.” She said today: “Two billion dollar losses in JPMorgan give us further confirmation of the need…

  • Majority Favors Cutting Military Budget

    Kull is director of the Program for Public Consultation, a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and lead author of the recently released study “Consulting the American People on National Defense Spending.” He said today: “Three quarters of respondents favored cutting defense…

  • NATO Above the Law?

    Human Rights Watch today released a report “Unacknowledged Deaths: Civilian Casualties in NATO’s Air Campaign in Libya”. NATO will be holding its summit in Chicago beginning May 20. VIJAY PRASHAD, Author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Prashad is chair of South Asian history and…

  • Mommy Wars or Moms Against War: Bread and Butter and the Radical History of Mother’s Day

    Bravo is director of Family Values @ Work Consortium, a network of state coalitions working for paid sick days and paid family leave. She just wrote the piece “The Gifts Mothers Really Want,” which states: “My favorite Mother’s day gifts from my sons were their original stories, songs and poems. But what I needed when…

  • JPMorgan “Shock Disclosure” a “Wake-Up Call We Dare Not Ignore”

    The Financial Times reports today: “JPMorgan Chase announced a surprise $2 billion trading loss on credit derivatives trading, which chief executive Jamie Dimon blamed on ‘errors, sloppiness and bad judgement’ and warned ‘could get worse.’

  • U.S. Hosts Bahraini Prince as Monarchy Vows Harsher Crackdown

    The Obama administration is hosting Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa in Washington just as the Bahraini regime is vowing a harsher crackdown on anti-government protesters. Democracy Now reported this morning, “Appearing with al-Khalifa at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to directly mention the repression of protests, referring only to…

  • French and Greek Elections: End of “Pain-Is-Good” Politics?

    ETHAN YOUNG ethanyoung at earthlink.net Content manager for Economy Watch, a blog sponsored by the Brecht Forum, Young said today: “The defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy marks the end of ‘pain-is-good’ politics in France. The new Socialist president Francois Hollande is center-left to Sarkozy’s center-right, and shares Sarkozy’s commitment to the European Union. Unlike Sarkozy, Hollande…

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