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  • Mubarak, Army, U.S., Israel vs Egyptian People

    [As government forces have attacked peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square, Emad Mekay from Cairo reports] Mubarak is clearly backed by the Americans. He took some moves after speaking with Obama and a visit by a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner. Mubarak, the army, the Americans and the Israelis are clearly on one side.…

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  • Unrest Spreads to Sinai

    A Bedouin youth casually spreads out a piece of cloth before a police headquarters in Sheikh Zwayyed town in Sinai, the vast desert area to the east of Cairo across the Suez. “I will leave when Mubarak leaves,” he says. [Full piece from Inter Press Service]

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  • Chomsky: Strategic and Economic Objectives, Not Anti-Islamization, Drives U.S. Policy

    [While many are claiming that a central goal of U.S. policy is to minimize influence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Noam Chomsky contributed this to our blog] It is well-established, including the major scholarly literature, that the U.S. supports democracy if and only if that accords with strategic and economic objectives.  Following…

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  • An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

    ————————————————————————————————————————— [To sign; for recent news releases on Egypt from the Institute for Public Accuracy] Dear President Obama: As political scientists, historians, and researchers in related fields who have studied the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, we the undersigned believe you have a chance to move beyond rhetoric to support the democratic movement sweeping…

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  • Report from Cairo

    From Alex Ortiz in Cairo: “The army is beginning to come into Cairo … tens of thousands converged in midan al-gala’ coming from three different protest marches. Total communication blackout. Reports of senior police officers ordering their men to stand down and not beat or fire tear gas at protesters in Midan al-gala an hour…

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  • Report on Latest from Cairo

    CAIRO, Egypt [11 p.m. local time] — 1-Some government media figures appear to be joining ranks with the protesters. Mahmoud Saad, a talk show host in the Egyptian state-run TV, has announced that he will no longer appear on TV starting tonight after he came under pressure from top government officials to report “untruths” about…

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  • Police in Cairo Beating up Jounalists

    [From 9:28 a.m. ET]: Police started beating up journalists protesting outside the Press Syndicate in downtown Cairo. They beat up women journalists too who were screaming and crying for help. “Do not club women. Do not club women,” some of the men rushed to the police asking them not to target women. “You’ll make things…

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  • From Alex Ortiz in Cairo

    [The Egyptian government has apparently block Twitter, Facebook (as of Wed. morn U.S. ET) and other internet tools, though apparently some people are able to get around such restrictions. Email from 8:45 a.m. ET:] Downtown Cairo today remains in a state of high alert. There are many security forces and plainsclothed policemen visible on every…

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  • Video from Cairo

    Phone lines are intermittent and Twitter has reportedly been blocked in Egypt. Here is a live video feed: ustream.tv/channel/cairodowntown [update: ustream has been blocked, streaming now intermittently at livestream.com/cairowitness — further update, now at: www.justin.tv/cairowitness] Here is a YouTube video from earlier today:

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  • Ukraine’s Assault on a Free Press

    In Ukraine, where media diversity is often defined by which powerful oligarch controls which TV station, one network, TVi — known for its independent investigative style — is under intense legal pressure, with its owner not part of Ukraine’s power circles. TVi faces a court hearing on Tuesday over a legal claim that the station’s…

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  • New York Governor Hochul Proposes Budget Without Significant Reforms for Home Care Workers

    New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced a FY24 Executive Budget that activists say lowers home-care wages and worsens the state’s home care shortage––which is the worst in the nation. 

  • Activists Confront DNC about Biden, Manipulation of Primaries

    Democrats in the House and Senate have received thousands of emails from constituents who urged them to “stop muffling genuine concerns and start being honest about the pivotal downsides of a prospective Biden ’24 candidacy,” according to the Don’t Run Joe campaign, which is sponsored by RootsAction.org. 

  • Pakistan Bombing: An Attack on Elections?

    Al Jazeera reports in “Pakistan mosque bombing survivors traumatised but undeterred” that: “At least 100 people killed and more than 225 wounded in a suicide attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar.”

  • Community Control Over Police

    February is Black History Month. Many have been startled that Black officers were involved in the killing of Tyre Nichols. But some analysts have been warning that the issue is the structure and nature of police forces, not simply their ethnic composition.

  • Physicians Say “Tripledemic” Should Have Been Declared a Pediatric Emergency

    physicians argue that at the height of the “tripledemic,” the federal government should have exercised its power to declare a national emergency in pediatric health while viral illness spiked in children and pediatric hospital departments were overwhelmed across the country. The declaration allows for emergency funding, regulatory flexibility, and innovation.

  • Economic Conditions Pushing Americans to Delay Health Care Treatment

    Gallup has found that 38 percent of Americans postponed medical treatment in 2022, compared with 26 percent in 2021. Americans were more than twice as likely to delay medical treatment for a serious condition compared to a non-serious one.

  • Is New Cabinet the “True Face of Israel”?

    Peled is an activist and podcaster. His books include The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. He has argued that while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has claimed Israel didn’t ethnically cleanse Palestinians in high profile interviews, some other Israeli ministers have advocated another such expulsion — while Netanyahu says the first never happened.

  • War is a Racket: Fox Guarding Hen House; Stock Buybacks Rip Off Taxpayers

    Earlier this month, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees named eight commissioners who will review President Joe Biden’s National Defense Strategy and provide recommendations for its implementation. But the Commission on the National Defense Strategy is largely composed of individuals with financial ties to the weapons industry and U.S. government contractors.

  • Regulators Could Break Up Wells Fargo — If They Stay Strong

    “Last week, prodded by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the main big-bank regulator of Wells Fargo, known as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), said it is looking at new ways to tame megabanks, which show signs of being ‘too big to manage,’ including breaking them up.”

  • Confronting the Corporate Exploitation of Tweens

    This massive abduction of our children into a manipulative and exploitative virtual reality, separating them from their parents, communities, nature and even their teachers — reality in a word — calls for action.

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