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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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  • Military Spending and Policy

    WILLIAM HARTUNG President’s fellow at the World Policy Institute, Hartung said today: “When Gore and Bush have addressed the Pentagon budget, they have talked about how much to increase it, not whether to do so. That is remarkable if you consider that at $311 billion per year, the United States is already spending more on…

  • The Environment: Behind the Rhetoric

    PATTI GOLDMAN A managing attorney with Earthjustice Defense Fund, Goldman said today: “Differences between Bush and Gore include the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which came up in the debates. There are also differences in the priority and strategies for recovering Pacific salmon…. Gore favors having labor and environmental protection in trade agreements while Bush has not…

  • Bush and Gore Agree Death Penalty Deters; But What Are the Facts?

    Last night, presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore agreed that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. “I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people’s lives,” Bush said during the debate. Gore agreed, saying: “I support the death penalty…. I think it is a deterrence. I…

  • Big Oil Gets Bigger: Chevron and Texaco

    Chevron has just agreed to acquire Texaco for $36 billion. This follows the BP-Amoco and Exxon-Mobil mergers. The following analysts are available for comments: WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, Hauter said today: “This trend towards more consolidation in the oil industry is bad for consumers in the long run and…

  • Perspectives on Mideast Crisis

    MARC ELLIS Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University in Texas and author of Oh Jerusalem: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant, Ellis said today: “The escalation of the Israeli helicopter gunships firing into civilian areas is just appalling…. Justice would mean a shared real sovereignty of all of…

  • Interviews Available on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

    ALLEGRA PACHECO An Israeli Jewish human rights lawyer who represents Palestinians in the West Bank, Pacheco is now a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe. She wrote in The New York Times last week: “Since 1994, Palestinians have seen the influx of 50,000 new Jewish settlers into the West Bank and Gaza, the paving…

  • Revolution in Yugoslavia?

    ROBERT HAYDEN Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflict, Hayden said today: “The army has broken with the regime. The state media has been taken over by the opposition. It’s a real…

  • Beyond Debate for Bush and Gore

    STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER Co-director of the Center for National Health Program Studies at Harvard University, Woolhandler said today: “On Medicare, Gore supports what is happening now — seniors slowly being forced into HMOs — while Bush supports accelerating the process. Bush cloaks his privatization of Medicare as ‘choice,’ but it means choosing between restrictive HMO ‘A’…

  • Debate Commission Says Gore-Bush Only: Responses Available

    The Commission on Presidential Debates has formally announced that it intends to exclude all third party candidates from the presidential debates. Phil Donahue (who is a member of the Committee to Elect Ralph Nader President) wrote in the Sunday Los Angeles Times: “If Ralph Nader is excluded from the presidential debates, many issues important to…

  • Key Economic Issues: Oil, IMF, Euro

    WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, Hauter said today: “Oil interests have used their enormous political power — which has increased with Exxon-Mobil and other mergers — to stop public policies that advance energy efficiency and conservation. Lehman Brothers reported recently that profits from the four largest oil companies are expected…

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