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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  • High-Ranking Officials Investigated About Iranian “Terrorist” Group

    The columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday: “Jeremiah Goulka worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an oft-cited study on the group. MEK…

  • Judges Not Debating Their Own Health Care

    With nearly half the Supreme Court justices who will pass judgment on the 2010 healthcare law beyond the age where they have to worry about their access to basic care, a leading voice for nurses said today that “all Americans should have the same level of security about their health.” Higgins is a registered nurse…

  • * Pope in Cuba * Silence as Female Palestinian Hunger Striker Goes Beyond 40 Days

    Farber is author of Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment. He said today: “While masses of Cubans turned out to greet the Pope, appearances can be misleading. This visit will serve neither democracy nor popular interests. In exchange for the international legitimacy that the Cuban government is obtaining from the Pope, the…

  • Beyond “Both Sides” — Doctors Against Mandate and for Universal Coverage

    In a recent letter published by the New York Times, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Arnold Relman, notes that their coverage of the debate about a health insurance mandate didn’t “mention an important new argument against the Affordable Care Act’s mandated purchase of private insurance, the key issue before…

  • World Bank: First Qualified President?

    Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He said today: “The Obama administration’s announcement that it will nominate health expert and Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim for World Bank president represents a historic milestone in the institution’s history, with the U.S. nominating, for the first time, a qualified candidate. This…

  • Breaking: Coordinated Protests Against “Outlaw” Fukushima-Style Nuclear Plant Operator, Arrests Expected in Three States

    The AP is reporting now: “Protesters marched in Brattleboro against the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant Thursday, the first day of its operation after its initial 40-year operating license expired. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued the plant a 20-year license extension, but the state of Vermont wants the plant…

  • Summers at World Bank? Record on Poor Countries and Gender Bias

    President of Public Citizen, Weissman just wrote the piece “The (Larry) Summers of Our Discontent,” which states: “‘Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?’ “Do those sound like the words of a man who should be running the world’s…

  • Ryan Budget: Increases Pentagon, “Out of Touch”

    House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled a 2013 budget plan today. Hartung is a senior research fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and author of the book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, which is just being released in paperback. He said today: “While…

  • Rethinking Afghanistan and Debating the Strategic Partnership Agreement

    Available for a limited number of interviews, Gopal is an independent journalist who has reported extensively from Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal and other publications. He is currently at work on a book on the war in Afghanistan. He was recently interviewed by The Real News: “Afghan Killings Product of…

  • Congressional Push for Sachs as Next World Bank Head

    For the first time in the World Bank’s history, a candidate is openly campaigning for presidency of the institution. Traditionally, the U.S. government has hand-selected the World Bank president, but economist and health expert Jeffrey Sachs has shaken up the process this time by publicly proclaiming his interest in succeeding Robert Zoellick as World Bank…

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