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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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  • Ukraine: Stopping the Escalatory Ladder

    Carden is a former adviser to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. He has written for The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd and other outlets.

  • Pandemic’s Effects on Employment and Disability Among Older Americans

    A new working paper from the National Bureau for Economic Research found that labor force non-participation remains high in older Americans. Disability benefits, meanwhile, are depressed relative to pre-pandemic levels.

  • Should All Adults Under 65 Get Screened for Anxiety?

    the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that primary care doctors should regularly screen all adults under 65 for anxiety, even those without symptoms. Neuroscientist and anxiety specialist Judson Brewer says that “screening by itself is not so helpful. If you screen for something you don’t have a treatment for––who cares?”

  • How Nuclear Wars Can Start: Nuclear War Exercise, Then and Now

    For the first time since World War II, troops were also deployed to The Netherlands. The unprecedented nature of the troop movements certainly attracted Soviet attention.

  • New National Data on Long Covid

    In a report on new Census data from the Household Pulse Survey from September, the Center for Economic and Policy Research write that about 4.4 million adults report symptoms from long Covid that reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities by a lot.

  • Activists Demand a Halt to NATO Nuclear War Rehearsals; Congressional Action

    RootsAction.org has launched a campaign “Tell Congress and President Biden to make NATO cease its nuclear war rehearsals.”

  • Biden Pleads on Stock BuyBacks, but Why the Inaction?

    “in 2005-2015 Exxon Mobil distributed $224 billion in buybacks on top of $101 billion in dividends (a combined 86 percent of net income). As Vice President, Biden was an outspoken critic of stock buybacks, and he should know that an executive order that bans buybacks is the only way in which the oil companies will cease using the profits…

  • Call for Banning Killer Drones, from Ukraine to Ethiopia

    “”Killer drones are a particularly inhumane type of warfare with high error rates causing the deaths of civilians. Moreover, killer drones seek to desensitize us from war, make war seem ‘easier’ and thereby increase the chances of yet more wars.”

  • Critics of Intervention in Haiti

    Experts say “the last thing the Haitian people want is another ‘humanitarian’ invasion and occupation by the U.S. and the ‘Core Group.'”

  • Ukrainian Missile Crisis

    “During the Cuban crisis, Kennedy was under intense pressure to act militarily, by striking the Soviet missile sites or invading Cuba, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff; members of the Executive Committee (ExComm) of the National Security Council”

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