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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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  • Execution of Troy Davis and the “Culture of Killing”

    AP reports: “Georgia executed Troy Davis on Wednesday night for the murder of an off-duty police officer, a crime he denied committing right to the end as supporters around the world mourned and declared that an innocent man was put to death. … He told relatives of Mark MacPhail that his 1989 slaying was not…

  • UN Speech on Palestine: “Yes, Mr. Obama, Peace is Hard…”

    The New York Times reports: “President Obama declared his opposition to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for statehood through the Security Council on Wednesday, throwing the weight of the United States directly in the path of the Arab democracy movement even as he hailed what he called the democratic aspirations that have taken hold throughout the…

  • Myth: Raising Taxes on Wealthy Kills Jobs

    CHUCK COLLINS, chuckcollins7 at mac.com Collins just wrote the piece “A Tax Plan to Rally Around: The Buffett Rule,” which states: “Over the last decade — and really over the last fifty years — the portion of income paid in taxes by our wealthiest citizens has steadily declined. In 1961, when Barack Obama was born,…

  • Wall Street Protests

    ABC News reports: “Protesters who vowed to ‘occupy Wall Street’ are holding their ground in downtown New York, and say they have no plans to leave anytime soon. “The protest started Saturday with a ‘Day of Rage,’ when thousands of people gathered in the Financial District and vowed to stay on Wall Street as long…

  • Palestinian UN Bid and Uniting for Peace

    The Wall Street Journal reports in “Palestinian UN Move Options at UN Lead to Legal Threat to Israel’s Military,” that: “If the Palestinian Authority succeeds in winning even an incremental upgrade of its status at the UN, it could subject Israel’s military to international courts for actions in Palestinian territory — as well as allow…

  • Japanese Delegation on Fukushima and Nuclear Safety

    A farming family from the now radioactively contaminated Fukushima region in Japan, along with one American and three leading Japanese anti-nuclear campaigners, will be available for interviews while visiting the U.S. The group will deliver eye-witness accounts about the health impacts and continued contamination produced by the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor units that suffered catastrophic damage on…

  • U.S. Vetoing Palestinian State It Claims to Support

    FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at law.uiuc.edu Professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign and author of Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law, Boyle said today: “This week, President Obama has attacked the Palestinian UN membership bid as a ‘distraction’ and Secretary of State Clinton has claimed the U.S. ‘strongly supports’…

  • Solyndra: Partisan Politicking Obscures Growth of Solar Power

    The New York Times is reporting: “A House subcommittee released documents on Wednesday morning suggesting that a final review of more than $500 million in loan guarantees for Solyndra, a California solar company that recently declared bankruptcy, may have been rushed so that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could announce its approval at a…

  • * Gender Poverty Gap * 50 Million Uninsured

    Census Bureau numbers released yesterday found that nearly one in six Americans are in poverty. The following are available to further analyze other findings: ELIZABETH GRAYER, TIMOTHY CASEY, tcasey at legalmomentum.org Grayer is president of Legal Momentum, Casey is senior staff attorney with the group, which just released the memo “Reading Between the Lines: Women’s…

  • * Ron Paul and 9/11 * Perry and Mandatory Vaccines

    At last night’s Republican candidate debate, Congressman Ron Paul said “There’s a difference between military spending and defense spending. I’m tired of all the militarism we’re involved in. … I agree, we’re in alot of danger but most of the danger comes from a lack of wisdom in our foreign policy. … We’re under grave…

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