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.…

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  • 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]

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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:

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  • 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…

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  • Military Personnel Refusing War

    EHREN WATADA Available for a limited number of interviews, First Lt. Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to the war in Iraq. He said today: “I am wholeheartedly opposed to the continued war in Iraq, the deception used to wage this war, and the lawlessness that has pervaded every aspect…

  • End of the Internet?

    The Senate has been hearing testimony about Network neutrality on the Internet and is expected to take up the subject in telecommunications legislation next week. MARK COOPER Director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, Cooper said today: “Network neutrality has existed throughout the history of the Internet and created the most dynamic environment…

  • · Rove Walks? · Bush and Permanent Bases in Iraq

    ROBERT PARRY Parry is the founder and editor of ConsortiumNews.com. He wrote the piece “Letting the White House Walk?” last October. Parry said today: “This decision shows that Patrick Fitzgerald has taken a very narrow approach to prosecuting crimes in the course of this investigation.” Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s…

  • Guantanamo and Suicides

    In the aftermath of apparent suicides by three men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., Commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo, stated: “They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act…

  • Zarqawi

    LORETTA NAPOLEONI Currently in Rome, Napoleoni is available for a limited number of interviews. She is the author of the book Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda’s New Generation. She said today: “Al-Zarqawi is a man we created out of nothing, because, let’s not forget that Al-Zarqawi was presented to the world as the link between…

  • · Palestinian Authority · East Timor

    ALI ABUNIMAH Abunimah wrote the new article “Dangerous Dirty Tricks in Palestine,” in which he states: “Without consulting [Palestinian Authority] Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, [Palestinian President] Abbas announced that Hamas would have 10 days to accept the prisoners’ document without any changes or he would call a referendum. Hamas made clear that…

  • · Congo · Sudan

    MAURICE CARNEY Time magazine’s cover story last week noted: “Simmering conflict in Congo has killed 4 million people since 1998, yet few choose to cover the story.” Executive director of Friends of the Congo, Carney said today: “The central issue of the Congo has long been its enormous wealth and the nexus that exists among…

  • Beyond Haditha

    DAVID MacMICHAEL A disabled veteran of 10 years active Marine Corps service in Korea, MacMichael was a Defense Department consultant from 1965 to 1969 in Southeast Asia. During most of that period he was attached to the office of the Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. In that capacity he reviewed…

  • UN Declaration on AIDS Causes Outrage

    The group ActionAid International is criticizing the declaration coming from the UN AIDS conference taking place in New York City. ActionAid International states that “the declaration does not commit governments to urgently fill the $10 billion funding gap … every year to finance the scaling up towards the goal of universal access.” Among those AIDS…

  • Blix Report

    Today the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chaired by Hans Blix presented its report “Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The following nuclear disarmament specialists are available for interviews: JOHN BURROUGHS Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, said today:…

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