Blog

  • Mubarak, Army, U.S., Israel vs Egyptian People

    [As government forces have attacked peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square, Emad Mekay from Cairo reports] Mubarak is clearly backed by the Americans. He took some moves after speaking with Obama and a visit by a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner. Mubarak, the army, the Americans and the Israelis are clearly on one side.…

    Read more »


  • Unrest Spreads to Sinai

    A Bedouin youth casually spreads out a piece of cloth before a police headquarters in Sheikh Zwayyed town in Sinai, the vast desert area to the east of Cairo across the Suez. “I will leave when Mubarak leaves,” he says. [Full piece from Inter Press Service]

    Read more »


  • Chomsky: Strategic and Economic Objectives, Not Anti-Islamization, Drives U.S. Policy

    [While many are claiming that a central goal of U.S. policy is to minimize influence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Noam Chomsky contributed this to our blog] It is well-established, including the major scholarly literature, that the U.S. supports democracy if and only if that accords with strategic and economic objectives.  Following…

    Read more »


  • An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

    ————————————————————————————————————————— [To sign; for recent news releases on Egypt from the Institute for Public Accuracy] Dear President Obama: As political scientists, historians, and researchers in related fields who have studied the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, we the undersigned believe you have a chance to move beyond rhetoric to support the democratic movement sweeping…

    Read more »


  • Report from Cairo

    From Alex Ortiz in Cairo: “The army is beginning to come into Cairo … tens of thousands converged in midan al-gala’ coming from three different protest marches. Total communication blackout. Reports of senior police officers ordering their men to stand down and not beat or fire tear gas at protesters in Midan al-gala an hour…

    Read more »


  • Report on Latest from Cairo

    CAIRO, Egypt [11 p.m. local time] — 1-Some government media figures appear to be joining ranks with the protesters. Mahmoud Saad, a talk show host in the Egyptian state-run TV, has announced that he will no longer appear on TV starting tonight after he came under pressure from top government officials to report “untruths” about…

    Read more »


  • Police in Cairo Beating up Jounalists

    [From 9:28 a.m. ET]: Police started beating up journalists protesting outside the Press Syndicate in downtown Cairo. They beat up women journalists too who were screaming and crying for help. “Do not club women. Do not club women,” some of the men rushed to the police asking them not to target women. “You’ll make things…

    Read more »


  • From Alex Ortiz in Cairo

    [The Egyptian government has apparently block Twitter, Facebook (as of Wed. morn U.S. ET) and other internet tools, though apparently some people are able to get around such restrictions. Email from 8:45 a.m. ET:] Downtown Cairo today remains in a state of high alert. There are many security forces and plainsclothed policemen visible on every…

    Read more »


  • Video from Cairo

    Phone lines are intermittent and Twitter has reportedly been blocked in Egypt. Here is a live video feed: ustream.tv/channel/cairodowntown [update: ustream has been blocked, streaming now intermittently at livestream.com/cairowitness — further update, now at: www.justin.tv/cairowitness] Here is a YouTube video from earlier today:

    Read more »


  • Ukraine’s Assault on a Free Press

    In Ukraine, where media diversity is often defined by which powerful oligarch controls which TV station, one network, TVi — known for its independent investigative style — is under intense legal pressure, with its owner not part of Ukraine’s power circles. TVi faces a court hearing on Tuesday over a legal claim that the station’s…

    Read more »


  • Business Leaders Want Big Corps to Pay More, Not Less

    Klinger is director of tax policy for Business for Shared Prosperity. He said today: “President Obama’s tax framework spotlights some very important themes, including closing corporate tax loopholes and curtailing the abuse of offshore tax havens, but the devil is in the details. Until the President proposes a rate for his global minimum tax, we…

  • End of a Palestinian Hunger Strike Sheds Light on “Lawless Captivity”

    Just back in the U.S. from the Mideast, Falk is available for a limited number of interviews. He is the UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights and just wrote the piece “Saving Khader Adnan’s Life and Legacy,” which states: “It is a great relief to those millions around the world who were moved to…

  • Ron Paul: The U.S. Is Slipping Toward Fascism

    Available for a limited number of interviews, Bix won the Pulitzer prize for his book Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. He is a professor at Birmingham University in both the history and sociology departments. While he is best known for his work on Japan, he is a scholar of international and U.S. affairs.…

  • Yemen “Elections”

    Dahlgren writes frequently on Yemen. She is Academy of Finland research fellow with the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and the author of Contesting Realities: The Public Sphere and Morality in Southern Yemen. (Syracuse Univ. Press 2010). She said today: “Today Yemen will have presidential ‘elections” with only one candidate, Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur…

  • The .0000063% Election

    ARI BERMAN, ari at thenation.com, Berman just wrote the piece “The .0000063% Election: How the Politics of the Super Rich Became American Politics,” which states: “At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation — drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the…

  • Iran: Propaganda Wars

    Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He just wrote the piece: “A Dangerous Game on Iran.” He said today: “There are clearly drumbeats for war in U.S. media coverage of Iran, largely fueled by the Israeli propaganda blast suggesting an array of Iranian assassination attempts with no discernible…

  • Honduras Fire: Government Complicity?

    “The fire that killed over 300 prisoners early Wednesday morning in the Honduran city of Comayagua occurs in a context of police militarization which has been posited by the post-coup government and U.S. State Department as a solution to ‘security’ problems in Honduras, despite strong opposition from Honduran citizens. Honduras is currently the most dangerous…

  • Obama’s 2013 Budget: Beyond the Partisanship

    Wysham is the co-director or the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She said today: “The good news in Obama’s 2013 budget is that he proposes ambitious initiatives on public transit, clean vehicles, energy efficiency, and renewable energy issues, and has proposed to eliminate $4 billion in subsidies to…

  • Next for Occupy: Global Protests? Nine Years After February 15, 2003

    Amirani is producer-director of the forthcoming documentary “We Are Many” about the February 15, 2003 global protests by millions against the impending invasion of Iraq. He said today: “In December, Time Magazine named its Person of the Year, ‘The Protestor,’ in a tribute to the Arab uprisings and the subsequent Occupy movement that swept across…

  • What is Bahrain Trying to Hide?

    Arraf and Sainath are lawyers and human rights activists who, as part of the Witness Bahrain initiative, spent a week in Bahrain before being deported over the weekend. The two of them are now in New York City and were on “Democracy Now!” this morning “U.S.-Backed Bahraini Forces Arrest and Deport Two American Peace Activists…

Mastodon