News Items

  • 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 in the Mideast: angryarab.blogspot.com; the new journal jadaliyya.com;  merip.org; juancole.com For Tunisia and generally: #Sidibouzid (refers to the town of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who on December 17 was the first of several in the region to immolate himself in protest.) Egypt: #Jan25…

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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 Republicans alone who sought to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. But Obama’s 2012 budget takes us to the brink of a new bipartisan consensus against low income people. Will progressives go along? Mink is co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the…

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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 wealthy and can buy off large segments of the population. It can rule more autonomously than Ben Ali or Mubarak because it is less dependent on foreign aid. It can endure a political crisis far longer. The regime has also been weathered by a far…

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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 minister of Interior Habib El Adly. Process not transparent. Parliament has not been dissolved. Nor has the Shura council. etc. Aida Seif El Dawla is with the Nadeem Center for Victims of Torture in Cairo. She was profiled by Time magazine as a global hero…

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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, and spokespersons for social and economic constituencies to forge a new, responsible, transparent, democratic system of civilian governance.

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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 has been closely tied through much of his career, the CIA. During the war on terror, Suleiman headed Egypt’s foreign intelligence agency and as such he was the key contact for the CIA in a number of activities, particularly including its highly secretive extraordinary renditions…

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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: Arabic and English. See some Twitter feeds: #Jan25 (referring to the Egyptian protests which began January 25); tweetchat.com/room/jan25; feed from Cairo; @avinunu (who is in Amman) set up a Reporters in Egypt list. Philip Rizk @tabulagaza; blogger arabawy.org at @3arabawy; blogger arabist.net at @arabist; Al Jazeera…

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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 with US Ambassador Margaret Scobey, as well as Major General FC “Pink” Williams, the defence attaché and director of the US Office of Military Cooperation in Egypt. Livingston and Miner were lobbyists employed by the government of Egypt, helping them to open doors to senior…

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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 handmade crafts sold to tourist, was where I went. Here’s what I found out:

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  • Is Use of Depleted Uranium a War Crime?

    “After NATO’s use of DU weapons in Kosovo in 1999, the Council of Europe called for a world-wide ban on the production, testing, use, and sale of DU weapons, asserting that DU pollution would have ‘long term effects on health and quality of life in South-East Europe, affecting future generations.’ The call went unheeded.”

  • Biden in Vietnam: The Reality Beyond “Fantasyland”

    “Major media are reporting that somehow Biden is going to woo Vietnam from China. This is fantasyland. Vietnam kicked the U.S. out. They don’t love China, but it’s their biggest trading partner. There are 1.4 billion Chinese right next door. Vietnam is going to do business with whomever, that’s their concern now, providing a better…

  • Medicaid “Unwinding” Is Biggest Insurance Loss in U.S. History

    As of September 5, at least 5,677,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled from the program. This is the largest concentration of health insurance loss in American history.

  • 9/11 Whistleblower Coleen Rowley on Continuing Perpetual War Propaganda

    “9-11 did indeed ‘change everything’ for those in power in the U.S. and their cover-up experts like 9/11 Commission head Phillip Zelikow who now seem fully able to make their own reality. Most Americans are consequently manipulated by propaganda, exploiting our human emotional vulnerabilities to fear, hate, greed, false pride and blind loyalty so effectively…

  • U.S.-Saudi-Israel: Normalizing Atrocities

    “A recent report suggests that the meetings will discuss a NATO-like agreement between Saudi Arabia and the United States, a measure which might then move Saudi Arabia closer toward normalizing relations with Israel. What does Riyadh want in return? ‘Riyadh has been seeking a NATO-like mutual security treaty that would obligate the U.S. to come…

  • ADL: Not a Civil Rights Group, an Advocate for Israel

    “Musk and the ADL perform this dance in which Musk rallies his racist base, and the ADL gets to present itself as if it’s an antiracist organization. It isn’t — the ADL is an advocate for Israel and for key positions of the U.S. right, including anti-CRT and the notion that antiracist organizers are agents…

  • As 9/11 Anniversary Nears: “Time to Reassess the War on Terror”

    For the most part, the American public is left in the dark — unable to give the informed consent of the governed, while Washington’s bipartisan allegiance to perpetual war persists in the name of stopping terrorism.”

  • How the Myth of “Efficiency” Advanced Deregulation, Aided Corporate Mergers, and Devalued Labor

    “There is no empirical research to suggest that mergers that increase concentration actually lower costs and pass on the benefits to consumers. As one district court commented, ‘The Court is not aware of any case, and Defendants have cited none, where the merging parties have successfully rebutted the government’s prima facie case on the strength…

  • Labor Day: Best and Worst States for Workers in America

    Oxfam America released its 2023 edition of the Best States to Work. The five lowest-ranking states “have a minimum wage stuck at the federal level of $7.25, none mandate paid leave, and all have so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws on the books.”

  • Charges of “Flaws” in Protocols as Japan Dumps Fukushima Water Into Pacific

    “Japan and TEPCO claim that they are filtering the radioisotopes out, but only 40 percent of the tanks have been analyzed for radioactivity and not all isotopes were searched for. Radioactive hydrogen, called tritium, can’t be filtered at all.”

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