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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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  • U.S. in Iraq: Big Picture · Election Interference · America’s Blinders · The Logic of Withdrawal

    JERRY STARR Author of The Lessons of the Vietnam War, Starr said today: “The U.S. government is openly manipulating the construction of the Iraqi government. For the past half century, the U.S. has intervened in elections on behalf of candidates and parties considered most responsive to U.S. interests, including Iran and Guatemala in 1954, Vietnam…

  • Iraq “White House Memo”

    On Monday the New York Times reported on the “White House Memo” — secret minutes, taken by a high British official, of a White House meeting between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in January 2003. Highlights of the memo were first published this year in January in the book Lawless World: America…

  • Immigration

    LARRY BIRNS Birns is director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs based in Washington. He said today: “Immigration is a bilateral issue very much involving Mexico, and must be addressed as such, with comprehensive strategies that treat not just the symptoms (illegal workers in the U.S.) but the illness as well (Latin America’s lack of…

  • Bush’s Signing Statements: Suppressing the Power of Congress?

    CHARLIE SAVAGE Savage is Justice Department correspondent for the Boston Globe. In a piece published Friday headlined “Bush Shuns Patriot Act Requirement,” Savage reported: “When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress…

  • Death Squads in Iraq

    ROBERT PARRY In early 2005, Parry wrote the article “Bush’s ‘Death Squads,’” which examined the “Salvador Option” in Iraq, referring to the 1980s U.S. government’s “supporting El Salvador’s right-wing security forces, which operated clandestine ‘death squads’ to eliminate both leftist guerrillas and their civilian sympathizers.” Parry is editor of ConsortiumNews.com. He broke many of the…

  • U.S. Military Bases: Iraq and Beyond

    DAHR JAMAIL Jamail, who has spent extensive time in war-torn Iraq, is author of the recent article “Iraq: Permanent U.S. Colony.” He said today: “Bush refuses to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq because he doesn’t intend to withdraw. He doesn’t intend to because he’s following a larger plan for the U.S. in the…

  • Bush Deceptions Today About Origins of Iraq War

    At this morning’s news conference, responding to a question from journalist Helen Thomas about the real reason for initiating the Iraq war, President Bush said: “I didn’t want war. … No president wants war. … And the world said, ‘Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.’ And therefore, we worked with the world. We worked to…

  • Iran and Iraq

    KATHARINE GUN Gun is available for a limited number of interviews. Shortly before the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq, in early 2003, Gun was a British government employee when she leaked a U.S. intelligence memo indicating that the U.S. had mounted a spying “surge” against delegations on the U.N. Security Council in an effort to win…

  • Three Years After Iraq Invasion

    NANCY LESSIN Lessin is co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, which is protesting the war with 50 events in 26 states listed on their web page. She can put media in touch with their members around the country. Lessin said today: “As we commemorate the third year of this war that should never have happened,…

  • Myth: Israel’s Strike on Iraqi Reactor Hindered Iraqi Nukes

    Today, the Bush administration releases a major national security strategy document which reaffirms the U.S. policy of so-called “preemption” and depicts Iran and its nuclear program as major threats. Many advocates of striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities cite Israel’s 1981 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear facility. The following specialists are available for interviews: RICHARD WILSON…

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