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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  • Nuclear Obligations: Iran and the United States

    A long-awaited review conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) got underway at the United Nations today, with the talks scheduled to last until May 27. The NPT treaty obliges existing nuclear powers to dismantle their arsenals and non-nuclear powers to refrain from obtaining nuclear weapons. ROSS POURZAL A Washington-based political analyst who is on the…

  • Major Issues on Immigration

    JUDITH GOLUB Congress is expected to soon pass a piece of legislation known as the Real ID Act. Golub is senior director of advocacy and public affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She said today: “Real ID is an example of the legislative process gone wrong — both procedurally and substantively. It’s been tacked…

  • Thirty Years After Vietnam War: The Logic of Withdrawal from Iraq

    HOWARD ZINN Thursday marks the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Vietnam. Zinn’s 1967 book Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal argued for the U.S. to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia. He said today: “The U.S. is not doing any good with its military in Iraq. It’s not bringing liberty…

  • Where’s the Accountability? * One Year After Abu Ghraib * Misleading About WMDs

    MARJORIE COHN Thursday is the first anniversary of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos. Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and author of “Torture of Prisoners in U.S. Custody,” Cohn said today: “Although Donald Rumsfeld approved the use of physical coercion and sexual abuse of…

  • Big Oil: High Prices, Record Profits

    TYSON SLOCUM Research director for Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, Slocum said today: “Since Bush took office, the largest five oil companies operating in the U.S. have after-tax profits of $205 billion. We need to examine the relationship between U.S. oil company profits and the higher prices for consumers and American industry.…

  • Behind the Hand-Holding: Bush and the Saudis

    AS’AD ABUKHALIL AbuKhalil is author of the book The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power, professor in the Department of Politics at California State University, Stanislaus, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley. He said today: “The meeting today will cement the continued improvement in U.S.-Saudi relations despite criticism of the…

  • The New Pope: The Silencer?

    LEONARD SWIDLER Professor of Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Temple University, Swidler said today: “I have known Ratzinger since 1964 when I published an article of his promoting ecumenical dialogue in the first issue of the new scholarly journal my wife Arlene and I launched, the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Unfortunately he is not…

  • Earth Day: “Sleepwalking into an Apocalypse”?

    Friday, April 22, is the 35th Earth Day. The following environmentalists are available for interviews: BERN JOHNSON MECHE LU Johnson is executive director of the U.S. office of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, which works with attorneys in 60 countries to protect the environment through law. He said today: “The damage that we are doing…

  • The New Pope and “Dictatorship of Relativism”

    ROBERT ELLSBERG Available for a limited number of interviews, Ellsberg is editor in chief of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. He is author of a number of books, most recently The Saints’ Guide to Happiness. He said today: “This would indicate that the cardinals viewed doctrinal orthodoxy as a…

  • Marla Ruzicka in Iraq: War Victims Discounted

    Marla Ruzicka, who founded the organization Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, was killed in Iraq over the weekend. The Washington Post reports today that she “won over Congress and the U.S. military, persuading the United States to free a precedent-setting $20 million for civilians it injured” in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Post writes: “This…

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