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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  • Rove

    Rev. MEL WHITE Rev. White said today: “Karl Rove scapegoated gays to win elections, first for Congress and then for president.” White is a former ghostwriter for fellow evangelicals, including Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, and Jerry Falwell. He is president of Soul Force, a group using the nonviolence methods of Gandhi and Martin…

  • One Million Iraqis Killed?

    ROBERT NAIMAN National coordinator and senior policy analyst at Just Foreign Policy, Naiman said: “Just Foreign Policy is publishing updated estimates of Iraqi deaths due to the U.S. invasion and occupation starting in 2003. And the way that we constructed this estimate is to extrapolate from the Lancet study that was published last fall. “The…

  • Nagasaki and the Second Bomb

    August 9 is the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. WILLIAM D. HARTUNG Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the New America Foundation. He said today: “Even more so than Hiroshima, the U.S. decision drop a second atomic bomb — this time on Nagasaki —…

  • Iraqi Oil Law Impasse: Good News for Democracy?

    Iraqis oppose plans to open the country’s oilfields to foreign investment by a ratio of two to one, according to a poll released yesterday. ANTONIA JUHASZ Juhasz is the author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time and a fellow with Oil Change International. She said today: “For the first…

  • Anniversary of Tonkin Gulf Resolution — August 7

    With only two dissenting votes in the entire Senate and House, the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964 — clearing the path to escalate the war in Vietnam. Passage of the measure came after the Johnson administration falsely claimed that U.S. vessels in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of…

  • · Presidential Politics and Nuclear Weapons · Hiroshima Anniversary

    The New York Times reports: “[Senator Barack Obama’s] remarks about removing nuclear weapons as an option in the region [Afghanistan or Pakistan] drew fresh attacks from Democratic rivals who had already questioned his foreign policy experience. American officials have generally been deliberately ambiguous about their nuclear strike policies.” JIM WALSH Walsh is a research associate…

  • Bush Threat to Veto Health Insurance for Children

    President Bush has announced that he would veto any expansion in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health insurance for children in low-income families. Congress will be considering legislation to renew or expand funding for the program this week. On Monday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote: “When a child is enrolled…

  • Military Budget

    The House is expected to debate the Fiscal Year 2008 “Defense appropriations” bill this week. WILLIAM HARTUNG Director of the Arms and Security Project at the New America Foundation, Hartung said today: “While Democratic leaders in the House talk about withdrawing from Iraq and closing Guantanamo, the only action that will come out of this…

  • Mideast Arms Deals

    CNN reports: “The United States is cutting new arms and military assistance deals with Middle Eastern countries in an effort to counter terrorism and improve stability in the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.” AS’AD ABUKHALIL AbuKhalil is author of several books on the Mideast including The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism,…

  • The 50th Anniversary of the IAEA

    This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the International Atomic Energy Agency. ROBERT ALVAREZ A former senior policy advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy and now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Alvarez said today: “As the IAEA marks its 50th anniversary, it faces major challenges associated with…

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