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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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  • Visions of Global Democracy

    VAN JONES The World Economic Forum, meeting in New York City, has named Jones as one of the “100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow.” Jones, who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996, said today: “I think it is a grudging admission on their part that the growing movements against corporate-led globalization and…

  • A Tale of Two Summits

    WALDEN BELLO JOY CHAVEZ Bello is the executive director and Chavez is a research associate for Focus on the Global South. Bello said today: “Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum [WSF] last year and again this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning movement against corporate-driven globalization. Galvanized by…

  • An Enron Model for the World?

    GREG PALAST Palast is an internationally recognized expert on regulation of power markets and author of Regulation and Democracy, an upcoming U.N. study. On a Jan. 24, 2001 news release by the Institute for Public Accuracy, he said: “The California blackouts are a simple case of greed run amok…. The big winners in this monstrosity…

  • Interviews Available: Welfare Reauthorization

    GWENDOLYN MINK Author of the newly-revised Welfare’s End and a political scientist at Smith College, Mink said today: “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reauthorization is Congress’s opportunity to undo some of the damage of the 1996 welfare law. The first step toward TANF reform must be to repeal TANF’s current goal of abolishing single motherhood,…

  • Interviews Available on Major Legal Issues

    MATT ROTHSCHILD Editor of The Progressive, Rothschild recently wrote the article “The New McCarthyism.” The Progressive is offering a regular feature called “McCarthyism Watch.” More Information SARAH HOGARTH Director of the National Lawyers Guild Post 9-11 Project, Hogarth said today: “The government is talking out of both sides of its mouth about the detainees. It…

  • From Manhattan to Brazil: Major Economic Summits

    On Jan. 31, the annual World Economic Forum — a gathering of the “1,000 most powerful corporations in the world” which has been held in Davos, Switzerland for three decades — will get underway in New York City. Meanwhile, the World Social Forum, bringing together tens of thousands of activists from human rights, environmental, labor…

  • High-Profile Summits Will Take On

    For several days beginning Jan. 31, two global summits — one in Manhattan, one in Porto Alegre, Brazil — will offer dramatically different visions for the future of the world economy. The World Economic Forum in New York City: According to its website (www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/Annual+Meeting+2002%5CAbout+the+Annual+Meeting), the WEF was established in 1971 as a “member-based institution comprised…

  • Dr. King: Beyond the Dreamer

    Quotes from speeches and sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. (full texts available at www.stanford.edu/group/King) From “The Drum Major Instinct”: Nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. “I must be first.” “I must be supreme.” “Our nation must rule the world.” And I am sad to say that the nation in which we…

  • Enron: Interviews Available

    WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program and co-author of the report “Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron’s Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans,” Hauter said today: “The Bush administration should immediately release all communications it has had with Enron because its selective disclosure of Enron contacts so far…

  • * Colombia * Haiti * Turkey

    SANDRA ALVAREZ, via Jason Mark The peace talks in Colombia, which seemed on the verge of collapse, have been extended until Jan. 20. Today the Washington Post reports that, according to administration officials, the “Bush administration is considering expanding U.S. counternarcotics assistance to Colombia to give more aid to that country’s counterinsurgency war against leftist…

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