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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  • Life Under Bombs

    NABA SALEEM HAMID LES ROBERTS Hamid is a University of Baghdad professor and founder of New Horizons for Women, an Iraq-based nonprofit organization. As quoted in a recent New York Times article on violence in Iraq, she stated: “It has become part of our daily lives. Just like there is eating, sleeping, there is bombing.”…

  • The Roberts Nomination: Substance and Context

    MARJORIE COHN Cohn is professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and author of Payback Time? She said today: “George W. Bush is paying back his right-wing religious and corporate backers by nominating a conservative who served in the Reagan and George Bush I administrations. As Deputy…

  • Third Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo

    On Saturday, July 23, over 300 events organized by the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition and Rep. John Conyers will mark the three-year anniversary of the meeting at No. 10 Downing Street in London that was recorded in the now infamous minutes known as the “Downing Street memo.” Members of Congress will be hosting some of the events,…

  • Gaza “Disengagement”

    STAV ADIVI Program liaison for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Adivi has been a refusnik in the Israeli military. He said today: “It seems Sharon’s desire for Gaza disengagement is genuine, but is a smokescreen to obscure what he is doing in the West Bank: cutting it to pieces, building the illegal wall, cutting…

  • Big Picture: * Rove * Blair * British Muslims

    DAVID SWANSON Swanson is a co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org — a coalition of veterans and peace groups. He said today: “Many are realizing that Karl Rove has been lying about not being a source in the leaking of the identity of Joseph Wilson’s wife. But the bigger picture is that this was part of a broader…

  • * Why Was Laura Bush Picketed in South Africa? * G8, Live8 and Debt

    During her visit to Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday, Laura Bush was picketed by members of Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa’s largest HIV/AIDS activism group. FARID ESACK Esack is a founding member of both Treatment Action Campaign and Positive Muslims, based in Cape Town, which does work on AIDS. He said today: “The U.S.…

  • CEO Payouts: Problems and Solutions

    Stephen Crawford, the co-president of Morgan Stanley, is leaving the company with a $32 million severance package. Today, Congressman Martin Olav Sabo introduced legislation which would limit government subsidization of excessive executive pay by eliminating tax deductions for compensation that exceeds 25 times the company’s lowest paid full-time employee. For example, if the lowest paid,…

  • Rove Scandal

    Newsweek is reporting on a leaked email from Time magazine stating that Karl Rove, the president’s senior advisor and chief political strategist, revealed the name of Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, who was an undercover CIA agent. The following are available for interviews: ROSA BROOKS Professor of law at the University of Virginia, Brooks is a…

  • G8 Agenda: Rhetoric vs. Reality

    British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday: “Just as it is reasonably clear that this is a terrorist attack, or a series of terrorist attacks, it is also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G8. … It is particularly barbaric that this has happened on a…

  • London Fallout

    COLLEEN KELLY Kelly is co-director of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of 9-11 victims’ relatives. More Information TARIQ ALI Currently in London, Ali is author of the books The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity and Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq. More Information OMAR WARAICH Waraich is an independent…

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