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News Items

  • 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. That’s one camp. The people of Egypt (most of them now) are the other. The Americans want Mubarak to stay on for longer while they look for a suitable successor that would be best for U.S. interests. Mubarak’s tactic is to make Egyptians choose between…

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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 that principle, in the Arab/Muslim region it has generally supported radical Islamists in fear of secular nationalism (as has the UK).  Familiar examples include Saudi Arabia, the ideological center of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror), Zia ul-Haq, the most vicious of Pakistan’s dictators, Reagan’s…

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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 over Egypt. As citizens, we expect our president to uphold those values. For thirty years, our government has spent billions of dollars to help build and sustain the system the Egyptian people are now trying to dismantle.

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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 ago.”

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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 the protests. Mahmoud Saad, a popular TV host, has told other journalists that his disappearance from his daily show, Masr El-Naharda (Egypt Today), comes in protests against pressure to defame protesters as rioters “destroying the country”. The state is clearly starting to launch a media…

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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 worse if you use violence” many journalists were telling police officers outside the building. In the industrial city of Mahala, police virtually cordoned off the city. My sources in the city tell me the police ordered early dismissal of textile factory workers to preempt any…

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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 street in the center of the city. There have been minor clashes with protesters in various parts of Cairo, as well as in Assiyut – a city to the south. At the moment, security forces are cordoning off Tahrir Square. Private security guards in the…

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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 frequencies were not legally authorized. But critics, including many from abroad, have accused the Kiev government of using the case as a way to bludgeon a troublesome media voice into silence. … [See full piece on consortiumnews.com]

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  • “Debt Shaming” Has Dampened Democracy

    “The single and most simple thing President Biden can do to help save the Democratic majority this midterm, while stimulating the economy, is cancel student debt; and he should do it without delay.”

  • Pandemic Poverty and Government Policies

    Inflation is hitting poor families hard, but pandemic economic policies that support families have largely run out. Research shows that the child tax credit helped millions get enough to eat, but it expired at the start of 2022. Shawn Fremstad says: “Today’s high inflation is being driven by excessively powerful corporations. Until recently, strong employment…

  • Albright’s Legacy and Ukraine War

    “Albright’s policies of expanding NATO, bombing Yugoslavia and falsely claiming that the bombing of the Chinese embassy there was not intentional helped set the stage for the extraordinarily dangerous situation now with Russia and China, despite recent claims from the Clintons. These policies may have actually helped lead to the rise of Vladimir Putin —…

  • * Mexico Voting to Nationalize Lithium * Pakistan’s Ousted PM Challenged Corporate Investment Agreements

    “The reasons for the former cricket star’s political downfall are not entirely clear. His economic policies were a mixed bag at best, but he deserves credit for one thing: he’d taken a bold stand against international investment agreements that give transnational corporations excessive power over national governments.”

  • Refuting Anti-Vaccine Disinformation on so-called “VAIDS”

    Online anti-vaccine influencers are claiming that Covid-19 vaccines cause “Vaccine-Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome”, or “VAIDS.” Dr. John Moore, who is widely known for his research on HIV/AIDS, says that “bringing AIDS into the existing web of deceit is a blatant attempt at fear-mongering.”

  • Mask Mandate on Public Transportation

    The Biden administration announced it will appeal the ruling that called the federal mask mandate on public transportation unlawful.

  • Earth Day: Military Degradation of the Environment

    Pat Elder, founder of MilitaryPoisons.org, said that on Earth Day, we should consider the U.S. military’s contribution to environmental and human destruction: “Let’s consider what causes cancers, immeasurable suffering, and early deaths for millions. And then we can talk about per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and how the military has known these are killer chemicals since…

  • Will Congress Stop the Worst Humanitarian Crisis, the Saudi Attack on Yemen?

    A just-published piece in Forbes, “Time to End the Forgotten War in Yemen,” states: “The scenes of carnage in Ukraine have sparked anger and concerted action against the Russian invasion of that country, now in its eighth week. But there is another conflict, now in its eighth year, that has resulted in the deaths of nearly half…

  • Pentagon Contractors Cashing in on the Ukraine Crisis

    [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.’ …

  • Future of Covid-19 Vaccine Patent Waivers Is in Doubt

    More than a year after the first Covid-19 vaccines went into use, only 15 percent of people in low-income countries have received a single dose of the vaccine, and no agreement has been reached on any proposal for intellectual property waivers for the vaccines. Tahir Amin, the cofounder of an organization attempting to reshape patent…

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