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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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  • Silicon Valley Wants A Bailout

    Americans for Financial Reform states: “The swift demise of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the actions taken by the federal regulators over the weekend underscore the folly of the partial rollback of the Dodd-Frank law in 2018

  • Collapse of SVB: Single Payer Healthcare — For the Financial System Only

    After 2008 the financial system was supposed to be fixed thanks to Dodd-Frank, stress tests, higher capital requirements, etc. Suddenly we wake up to discover that the collapse of a single bank mortally threatens the whole financial system and that authorities are reinstating single payer healthcare for the financial system (only).

  • China Brokers Normalization Between Iran and Saudi Arabia

    Saudi-Iran tensions have had many ups and downs in the past 40 years, but this is the first time they have agreed to lower the temperature through Chinese mediation. By not taking sides, China has emerged as a player that can resolve disputes rather than merely sell weapons.

  • “The Partisan Pandemic Cottage Industry”

    In a new piece for PESTE magazine, public-health researcher Abby Cartus critiques the mainstream narrative of pandemic response in the U.S., which contends that the reason the country’s pandemic response was so badly botched is the country’s deep partisan polarization. 

  • 20 Years Later: “The Most Important Leak” That Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion

    Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the Pentagon Papers, would comment: “No one else — including myself — has ever done what Katharine Gun did: Tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it. Hers was the most important — and courageous — leak I’ve ever seen, more timely and…

  • Matt Gaetz, Progressive Caucus Team Up to Oppose Syria Occupation

    “Ryan Grim of the Intercept reports in: “Matt Gaetz, Progressive Caucus, and Former Obama Ambassador Team Up to Oppose Syria Occupation” that: “The Obama administration’s ambassador to Syria [Robert Ford], a leading voice in favor of aggressively confronting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the time, is now backing an effort by Rep.…

  • Public Investments in the mRNA Vaccines

    The U.S. government invested at least $31.9 billion to develop, produce and purchase mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. “Since the U.S. people and government made the investments and took on the risks that were needed to produce the vaccines,” said Shawn Fremstad of CEPR, “we also need to be the ones to direct how the value we…

  • Amazon HQ2 Doesn’t Deliver Jobs: A Lesson on Corporate Subsidies

    “Amazon’s HQ2 slowdown is the latest evidence that incentives do not enable a company to defy gravity. At least the State of Virginia’s subsidies — probably the smallest offered among the HQ2 finalists — are performance-based, so the State is not going to pay unless the jobs materialize. Residents of Long Island City in Queens…

  • Medicare and Drug Prices

    Recent analysis in the Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy predicts that Medicare will most likely negotiate prices for 38 Medicare Part D drugs and two Part B drugs between 2026 and 2028.

  • Voters Rejecting Biden While DNC Rigs Process

    “Joe Biden’s presidency has been an abject failure. This is certainly the impression one gets from looking at the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll results, which find that ‘more than 6 in 10 Americans (62 percent) say they would be “dissatisfied” or “angry” if Biden were reelected in 2024.’ Just seven percent of voters say they…

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