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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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  • Obama: $50 Billion to Saudi in Weaponry

    “The Saudi-American arms deals are a continuation of a booming business that has developed between Washington and Riyadh during the Obama years. In the first six years of the Obama administration, the United States entered into agreements to transfer nearly $50 billion in weaponry to Saudi Arabia, with tens of billions of dollars of additional…

  • Hamilton: “Captain of the One Percent”

    “The U.S. myth of the Founding Fathers has revolved around Washington and Jefferson, but both have been scrutinized. Alexander Hamilton is now in effect being put forward, but he was the captain of the one percent — he represented the interests of big finance at the beginning of the United States.”

  • Coup in Brazil?

    “Unlike President Dilma, the politicians calling for her dismissal are corrupt and are as dirty as they come. Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-RJ) who, as chairman of the House is responsible for the impeachment process, has received more than 52 million Brazilian Rs. (BR$) from corrupt schemes undertaken in Petrobras, plus he has millions deposited in secret…

  • Clinton, Sanders, Israel and The Occupation of the American Mind

    “During last night’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders became the first major presidential candidate in recent memory to talk openly about Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights, repeatedly criticizing Hillary Clinton for barely even mentioning the Palestinian people in her speech to AIPAC last month.”

  • Vatican Conference Rejects “Just War” Theory

    “It’s long overdue that the leaders of the Catholic Church renounced and denounced the ‘just war’ theory. Christianity began as a faith totally committed to nonviolence. But then Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas proposed that some wars can be justified, which is completely opposite from the teachings of Jesus Christ. So it’s progress of…

  • Syria and Libya: Avaaz: Interventionist Tool in Progressive Guise?

    “Advocacy organizations should be about stopping wars, not asking their members to buy into a dubious military tactic for Syria that even leading U.S. generals say ‘entails killing a lot of people…[and is] a violent combat action that results in lots of casualties’ for those very Syrian civilians that Avaaz argues it is trying to…

  • New York and Fracking: Clinton vs Sanders

    “”Hillary Clinton has been strongly pushing for fracking throughout the world. Bernie Sanders on the other hand has strongly opposed fracking and other fossil fuel exploitation. For me — and for many other climate activists — this is the number one issue.”

  • Clinton Claims on Honduran Coup “Full of Falsehoods”

    “Hillary Clinton’s response to the question on Honduras was full of falsehoods and distortions. Her assertion that the generals and members of Congress who carried out the coup ‘had a very strong argument that they had followed the constitution’ is completely contradicted by the U.S. ambassador to Honduras at the time…”

  • Is Kerry’s Hiroshima Visit Cover for Nuclear Buildup?

    “While many are applauding Secretary Kerry’s visit, we have profound concerns that this visit may be used as cover. These stem from a knowledge of the U.S. government having embarked on a massive nuclear weapons build up.”

  • U.S. Air Wars Denounced by Recently Released Catholic Worker Grandmother

    “It’s obvious that the actions of our government are just creating more destruction and anger. We citizens must stop U.S. state sponsored terror through the use of killer drones. As the whistleblower drone operators stated in their open letter to President Obama, this practice only fuels recruitment to groups like ISIS.”

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