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…

    Read more »


  • “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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • “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…

    Read more »


  • 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.

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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]

    Read more »


  • 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…

    Read more »


  • 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:

    Read more »


  • Don’t Run Joe Campaign Responds to Biden Announcement

    “In the face of clear polling that shows he is ill-positioned to defeat a Republican nominee, Biden is moving the Democratic Party toward a likely disaster in 2024. As the Democratic standard bearer, Biden would represent the status quo at a time when ‘wrong track’ polling numbers are at an unprecedented high.”

  • Dan Ellsberg Week: Warnings of Nuclear War, “Conspiracy to Commit Omnicide”

    Ellsberg was a nuclear war planner during the 1950s and ’60s. Since then, he has spent his life writing, speaking, standing up and sitting-in against the threat of nuclear annihilation. He offers chilling clarity about “the nuclear war planners, of which I was one, who have written plans to kill billions of people, a conspiracy…

  • Diverse Medical School Admissions Seen as Vital for Physician Workforce

    A new study shows that over a four-year period, of 81,000 MCAT examinees nationwide, Black and Hispanic exam-takers were less likely to apply to medical school than white exam-takers. American Indian, Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic exam-takers were also less likely to matriculate into medical school compared to white exam-takers.

  • Major Meetings on mRNA Transfer Technology Program

    Program meetings began this week for the mRNA Transfer Technology Hub, a center to build capacity in low- and middle-income countries to produce mRNA vaccines, located at Afrigen in Cape Town, South Africa. Advocates hope the U.S. government will help fund the center.

  • Reporting Says Israel Hacked Russian Intelligence, Secretly Colluded with the Trump Campaign

    Bamford writes: “While the American media and political system fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin” what was completely missed “in the Russiagate investigation of 2016 was the Israeli connection. … The FBI did uncover hard evidence of extensive collusion between close Trump associates and the highest levels of the Israeli government.” After then-Secretary of State…

  • Germany’s Nuclear Shutdown Made Its Green Energy Possible

    The renewable energy revolution needed to save us from the worst of the climate crisis is a matter of political will, not technical know-how, and Germany’s weekend shutdown of its last three nuclear reactors marks a strong step in that direction.

  • Tax Day is Pay Pentagon Contractor Day

    The $1.6 trillion discretionary spending request includes an eye-popping $886 billion for the Pentagon and military. This means that more than half — 52 percent — of the proposed discretionary spending is for the military and war. Almost half of that — or about a quarter of the total discretionary budget — will go to…

  • Predictive Analytics Algorithm for Child Welfare

    Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, argues that predictive analytics algorithms used by child welfare services exacerbate biases in the system and expand the surveillance of poor families of color.

  • As U.S. Seeks Assange Extradition, Some Pushback From Australia

    After Smith’s visit to the tiny cell where Assange has been confined for what will be four years come this April 19, fighting a Washington extradition request that if approved and acted upon would have him facing espionage charges in a U.S. court, Australia’s Labour Party Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that he had ‘said…

  • “Critical Infrastructure” Laws vs. Protests for Environmental Justice and Police Accountability

    A new investigation finds that the arrests of environmental justice and police accountability activists in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia have been tied to “critical infrastructure” laws, which make nonviolent protest near oil, gas, electrical and other forms of infrastructure a felony and ratchet up the punishment associated with the actions. 

Mastodon