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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  • Manipulating Charges of Anti-Semitism

    “’Anti-semitic tropes’ are tendentiously read into Omar’s comments. AIPAC allies should stop hiding behind Jews, and Democratic politicians should stop feigning such sensitivity to Jewish feelings when Zionist lobbying is the subject. It’s a distasteful game.”

  • What Happened to Syria? What’s Next?

    Glass notes that despite Bashar Assad’s apparent victory, the Syrian civil war was much bloodier and more prolonged because of outside powers — the U.S., Russia and Iran — backing and arming various sides. The Saudis and the Qataris backed opposing jihadist forces. Thousands of these forces remain in the north of Syria, he warns,…

  • U.N. Report of Israeli Crimes and the Efforts to Silence Critics

    “This U.N. report is just the latest piece of evidence about Israel’s systematic brutality. The U.S. government quit the Human Rights Council to stop any serious criticism of Israel. And there’s a whole structure of anti-B.D.S. legislation and targeting of activists to silence people in the U.S.”

  • Why Did Hanoi Summit Really Fail? 

    Kevin Gray, a specialist in international relations at the University of Sussex, England tweeted that “Former SK unification minister Chong Se-hyun suggests that summit was derailed by last minute attendance of Bolton, who added demands for NK to also report chemical/biological weapons, in response to which NKs increased their demand for sanctions relief.” National Security Adviser John Bolton…

  • From Cohen to Venezuela: Hollowness of “Russiagate”

    Since Trump became president, Maté has written a series of pieces for The Nation counter to the prevailing conventional wisdom on Russiagate, including: “Mueller Accuses Roger Stone of Lying and Bullying — but Not Collusion,” “The Manafort Revelation Is Not a Smoking Gun,” “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in U.S. Politics,” “Don’t Let…

  • India-Pakistan Nuclear Threat

    “Military crises have occurred in the subcontinent with awful frequency in recent decades, despite the Bomb, and perhaps because of it. Pakistan and India have survived at least five since 1987, giving both sides misplaced confidence that they will survive the next, too. This, in turn, leads to a lessening of political restraints on the…

  • Former UN Expert on Venezuela: U.S. Government “Weaponizing Aid”

    “I think that the U.S. should turn over all the humanitarian assistance and medical supplies it has flown into Colombia and have them distributed as soon as possible with the help of the United Nations and other neutral organizations. … It would be appropriate to recognize the fact that the government of Venezuela has put into…

  • “Plutocracy Prevention Act”

    “Under current estate tax law, someone with $15 million and $15 billion pay the same flat rate of 40 percent. Senator Bernie Sanders’ improved estate tax proposal restores the top rate that existed between 1941 and 1976, when the estate tax was more robust.”

  • Bernie Sanders is Running for President: “The Wall vs. Medicare for All”

    “The 2020 election will be ‘The Wall vs. Medicare for All.’ It’s that simple, and we need the Medicare for All heavyweight champion, aka Sen. Bernie Sanders, in our corner, not the Johnny-come-lately options that eventually got on board after their pollsters said they needed it for a talking point.”

  • Haiti on Edge

    “The people are protesting on the streets because they are experiencing the unprecedented consequences of corruption and bad governance that has been going on for the past 10 years.”

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