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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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  • Gaza “More Dire Than Ever”

    During the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009, Dr. Gilbert was one of only two outside doctors in Gaza. Last week the International Criminal Court, to the protests of Amnesty International and other groups, stated it would not issue prosecutions for the Israeli Operation. Recently Gilbert, co-author of “Eyes in Gaza,”…

  • Where Did Your Taxes Go?

    National Priorities Project recently released Tax Day 2012 with the numbers on how federal income taxes were spent in fiscal 2011 — down to the penny, giving people a “Tax Receipt” for how their money is spent. The group found “Federal income tax revenues totaled around $1.13 trillion in fiscal 2011. … Twenty-seven cents of…

  • Egypt’s “Torturer-in-Chief” Running for President

    AP is reporting: “Hosni Mubarak’s former vice president and spy chief said in comments published Monday that he would not attempt to ‘reinvent’ the regime of his longtime mentor if he is elected president of Egypt. “Omar Suleiman, who is running in the presidential elections slated for May 23-24, told state-owned Al-Akhbar daily that restoring…

  • Bahrani Pro-Democracy Hunger Striker at Risk of Death

    AP is reporting: “Thousands of protesters in Bahrain chanted slogans Friday in support of a jailed human rights activist whose nearly two-month hunger strike has become a powerful rallying point.” BBC is reporting that the hunger striker, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, “has been moved to a hospital clinic and is being fed intravenously after 58 days on…

  • “JOBS Act” a “Recipe for Fraud” Creating a “Race to the Bottom”

    Black is now an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and the author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.” He was the deputy staff director of the national commission that investigated the cause of the savings and loan debacle. He was just…

  • International Criminal Court Rejects Israeli War Crimes Probe, Court Called “Hoax”

    The International Criminal Court refused on Tuesday to consider a war crimes tribunal against Israel for its military assault on the Gaza Strip in 2009 or for other possible criminal acts in occupied Palestine. Israel welcomed the news. Amnesty International called the ICC’s move “dangerous.” Author of “How America Gets Away With Murder, Illegal Wars,…

  • Martin Luther King and the Decline of Black Politics

    Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Many have noted that President Barack Obama has begun addressing racial issues after a long silence on the issue. Based in South Carolina, Gray is author of Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics and The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm…

  • Cholera in Haiti: Responsibility and Resurgence

    AP is reporting this afternoon: “The United Nations says Haiti has seen a jump in the number of cholera cases as the rainy season begins. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says in a bulletin released Tuesday that the new cholera cases were found in western Haiti.” On Monday The New York…

  • Welcome to the Energy Third-World: the United States

    Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of the new book The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. He just wrote the piece “A New Energy Third World in North America? How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the…

  • Syria Revolution “Enigma”

    Hagopian is a Syrian-American sociologist, a professor emeritus of sociology at Simmons College in Boston and political interviewer for Arabic Hour TV. She said today: “The so-called Syrian revolution is an enigma. It has split the left between those who support the so-called opposition with all its disparate parts to those who see the revolution…

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