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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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  • · Welfare Changes · Federal Reserve

    HEATHER BOUSHEY An economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Boushey said today: “New changes to the 1996 welfare reform law mean that more welfare participants will need to be in work activities and states will have less flexibility in defining what those activities are, all without significant increases in funding for child…

  • Supreme Court’s Guantanamo Decision

    BARBARA OLSHANSKY Olshansky is director counsel of the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been representing several of the Guantanamo detainees including Jumah Al Dossari, who has repeatedly attempted suicide. She said today: “This is a major victory for our democratic institutions and for our organization. The Supreme Court…

  • Gaza and Israel

    NASEER ARURI Aruri is chancellor professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and author of the book Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine. He said today: “Virtually every one of the nearly 100 Hamas officials and lawmakers that Israel has taken prisoner has called for the release…

  • · Bomb and Run — for Office · Scuttling Peace Plans · The Oil Timeline

    JAMES ABOUREZK A former U.S. Senator from South Dakota, Abourezk said today: “Bush clearly wants to have images of U.S. troops coming home before the election. During the Vietnam War, when Nixon felt the pressure to pull troops out, he resorted to increased bombing, putting civilian lives at high risk. Nixon wanted to ‘turn things…

  • Realities of Gaza

    MARC GARLASCO Garlasco is senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch and has recently returned from Gaza, where he investigated the June 9 shelling deaths of a Palestinian family on a beach there. The Israeli military inquiry disavowed responsibility for the bombing. Garlasco said: “An investigation that refuses to look at contradictory evidence can hardly…

  • Telecom Giants: Their Way on the Information Superhighway

    The Senate is considering telecommunications legislation which would end “network neutrality” and give the telecom industry additional powers. The New York Times reports today that AT&T “has revised its privacy policy for its television and Internet customers, asserting that the personal information it collects is owned by the company.” Full article The following analysts are…

  • Congress on Iraq and War: Lax and Spend?

    WILLIAM D. HARTUNG In the June 20 article “Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld’s Attention Was Elsewhere,” the Washington Post reported: “A series of reports … indicate that five years into the Bush administration, the department’s system of buying new weapons is broken and dysfunctional… ‘DOD is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely…

  • An Impoverished Minimum Wage?

    Congress is deliberating on the minimum wage. The following analysts are available for interviews: HOLLY SKLAR Co-author of the report “A Just Minimum Wage: Good For Workers, Business and Our Future” and the book Raise The Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us, Sklar said today: “Childcare workers and security guards struggle…

  • Coming to Ramadi: Terror From the Skies?

    Reuters is reporting: “Helicopters flew over the Iraqi town of Ramadi and warplanes could be heard screaming overhead as U.S. troops hunted down insurgents in the rebel stronghold on Monday, a Reuters witness said.” The following specialists are available for interviews: DAHR JAMAIL Jamail, who was in Fallujah while it was under siege in 2004,…

  • Iranian Peace Offers

    Sunday’s Financial Times story “Iran ‘Ready To Limit Nuclear Programme’” reports that “Iran’s leadership is ready to limit its nuclear programme but will not suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition for talks, two regime insiders have told the Financial Times.” Full article Also on Sunday, the Washington Post reported — under the headline “In 2003,…

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