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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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  • Indian Government Targets Independent Media Outlet

    “I believe The Wire and the progressive, upstanding, and fearless journalism it exemplifies will emerge stronger thanks to the lessons learned from this serious setback.” N. RAM, [email protected]

  • “Anti-Vaccine Aggression”

    Peter Hotez talked to the Institute for Public Accuracy about how––although deaths more or less halted in highly vaccinated communities after May 1, 2021––in undervaccinated places like Texas and in other parts of the southern U.S. and mountain West states, “the deaths had just begun.” 

  • Nukes in Finland Would Violate NPT: Legal Expert

    The United States positioning its nuclear weapons in Finnish or Polish territories would violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – warns professor of law as Euroweekly reports governments looking to engage in “nuclear sharing”

  • Nuclear Netanyahu

    “Latest exit polls show resounding victory for Netanyahu’s far-right coalition: anywhere from 61 to 62 seats. He will form the most extremist government in Israeli history. This means that his most violent allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir will demand ministerial posts

  • Supreme Court Attack on Affirmative Action: The Irony of Clyde Ferguson

    Professor of Law notes the irony of the Supreme Court targeting Harvard’s affirmative action program while the Harvard-based scholar Clyde Ferguson, his mentor, conceived of affirmative action.”

  • Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review “Pouring Gas on the Fire”

    “President Harry Truman, a Democrat, oversaw the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia and other would-be superpowers have increasingly modeled their own national security policies (and their economies) on the U.S. With festering nuclear flashpoints in Ukraine, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, South Asia, and the Middle East”

  • Latino Adults at Higher Risk of Socioeconomic Impacts from Long Covid

    A statewide survey of Latinos in Colorado has found that nearly one-fourth of Latinos in the state are suffering from long-term Covid symptoms. Advocates say that the next step is to “rethink the definition of disability.”

  • “Huge Disparities in Paxlovid Use”

    New data shows racial and ethnic disparities in outpatient treatment of Covid-19 with Paxlovid: Black patients were prescribed the drug 36 percent less often than white patients, while Hispanic patient use was 30 percent lower compared to non-Hispanic patients.

  • Teach-In on Nuclear Crisis and Lessons from Past Crises

    “The world is again on the verge of nuclear war”, says expert Steinbach who is organizing an online teach-in tonight at 7 p.m. ET on the current nuclear crisis featuring several nuclear experts.

  • Republicans Dying at Higher Rates Since Vaccine Rollout Began

    The National Bureau of Economic Research found that significantly more Republicans than Democrats have died from Covid-19 since the initial vaccine rollout in 2021. 

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