Archive | News

  • Women Protesting in Tahrir Square

      Protests sweeping Egypt have done more than raise hopes of democratic change.  Egypt’s women are hoping this might mark the start of a new era for them as well.  Women have been on the frontlines of the demonstrations, braving tear gas and gunfire, to call for the unseating of President Hosni Mubarak.  They helped […]

  • On Recent Attacks on Civil Liberties

    GEB Statement on Recent Attacks on Civil Liberties On September 24, 2010, the FBI carried out coordinated raids on the homes and offices of fourteen anti-war activists in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan.  During the raids, the FBI confiscated everything from computers and mailing lists to children’s drawings and photos of Martin Luther King. Ten of […]

  • Egypt: Vodafone Supports Dictatorship

    So not only did Vodafone have a disgraceful role during the April 2008 Mahalla uprising, now also the company is sending out text messages announcing pro-Mubarak’s protests. Massive demonstration to start at noon this Wednesday from Mustafa Mahmoud Square, in support of President Mubarak Can activists in the UK sue the mother company? Hossam el-Hamalawy […]

  • Haiti Resists US Pressure, Announces Aristide Can Return

    It didn’t get much attention in the media, but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did something quite surprising on Sunday.  After taping interviews on five big Sunday talk shows about Egypt, she then boarded a plane to Haiti.  Yes, Haiti.  The most impoverished country in the hemisphere, not exactly a “strategic ally” or a […]

  • Egypt: Retrofitting “Operation Ajax” to Support the Pharaoh against the People

      “As soon as I saw the defiant tone and substance of Mubarak’s speech, I realized that he is not speaking for himself but for the US/Israeli sponsors. . . .  I just read the speech by Obama: it confirmed my suspicion, that basically Mubarak was permitted by the US to do with the Egyptian […]

  • Nawal El Saadawi: “I’m 80 Years Old But I’m Ready to Fight”

      “They gave them bribes to beat us, to beat us here. . . .  My friends here, my friends, my daughter and son, who are here among the people, who are here together, they want me to go home.  I said no.  I have to stay here, because . . . we have to […]

  • On the Arab Revolt: Interview with Vijay Prashad

    Vijay Prashad is a prominent Marxist scholar from South Asia.  He is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut.  He has written extensively on international affairs for both academic and popular journals.  His most recent book The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the […]

  • Germany: Yet Another Vote for War in Afghanistan, Amidst Guttenberg Scandals

    “Guttenberg trotz Ansehensverlust beliebtester Politiker” [Guttenberg, Germany’s Most Popular Politician, Despite Scandals] (AFP, 28 January 2011). The German man of the hour is Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg.  Actually he has eight other given names, which modestly prohibits him from using, but the title shows that his family traces back to 1158.  He is […]

  • Tomorrow’s Tunisia and Egypt: Reform or Revolution?

      Arab uprisings are taking place with the historical speed of light.  I began writing this piece following the downfall of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and closed with the imminent downfall of the Egyptian one Hosni Mubarak.  The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings are not, as some armchair pundits called the Tunisian one, Jasmine Revolutions.  They […]

  • Queerer My God, to Thee: The Ex-Straight Ministries

    Believe it or not, heterosexuals, God loves you.  And because of His love, God told us to launch a pricey advertizing blitz, gently rebuking you on billboards and in newspapers across the country.  Unfortunately, we could only afford to rebuke you in this crummy tabloid-type publication.  But we know God will understand.  The important thing […]

  • Egypt: Mubarak Tries to Intimidate Protesters with F16s

    US tax dollars at work. . . . Cf. “Security Assistance: State and DOD Need to Assess How the Foreign Military Financing Program for Egypt Achieves U.S. Foreign Policy and Security Goals,” GAO-06-437 (11 April 2006).  See, also, “Egypt’s Minister of Defense Joins Protesters in Tahrir Square” (Al-Masry Al-Youm, 30 January 2011). | Print

  • Egypt: MSM on Baradei, Muslim Brotherhood, and the 6th of April

    IT IS NOT TRUE WHAT MSM IS BROADCASTING ABOUT PROTESTERS CALLING ON BARADEI TO LEAD TRANSITIONAL GOVT! WE DO NOT WANT THE ARMY!  THE ARMY HAS BEEN RULING SINCE 1952.  THEY R NOT NEUTRAL PLAYERS. It is not true what some MSM outlets r broadcasting about the Muslim Brotherhood and the 6th of April leading […]

  • The Showdown in Cairo!

    Tomorrow the Egyptian people will go to the streets en masse to give the final blow to the regime.  The people are talking of a rally of millions, and people have been pouring into Midan Atahrir, Tahrir Square, today and heading towards Cairo from the provinces.  The regime closed all the roads and stopped the […]

  • Tunisia: Continue the Revolution to Achieve Its Objectives

      No to the Continuation of Tyranny, No to Foreign Intervention While the Tunisian masses have been continuing their sit-in in the Qasbah Government Square, and tens of thousands of Tunisians have been marching in Sfax, Tunis, Sidi Bouzid, Jendouba, Nabeul, and other parts of the country, to bring down the “national unity government,” a […]

  • Bahrain, 14 February 2011?

    FYI: Cf. ثورة 14 فبراير في البحرين ; and BahrainFeb14, ; “Clerics have been ordered to preach against chaos” (As’ad AbuKhalil, “Bahrain Is Scared,” Angry Arab News Service, 28 January 2011). | Print

  • Can the Obama Administration Learn Lessons from the Egyptian Uprising?

      Karl Marx, in his famous treatise on Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 2 December 1851, pointing out its similarities to the coup undertaken by Napoleon Bonaparte a little over 50 years before, remarked that history has the tendency to repeat itself, ‘the first [time] as tragedy, then as farce’. As with so many other […]

  • Egypt to Mubarak: Your Time Is Up

    Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.   Cf. Nancy A. Youssef, “Why Has Egypt’s Army Not Confronted the Protests?” (McClatchy Newspapers, 30 January 2011). | Print

  • “They Want to Abort This Revolution, But We Will Win”: Interview with Nawal El Saadawi

      Amy Goodman: Your feelings today in the midst of this popular rebellion against the Mubarak regime, calling on Mubarak to leave?  Do you agree? Nawal El Saadawi: We are in the streets every day, people, children, old people, including myself.  I am now 80 years of age, suffering of this regime for half a […]

  • Egypt: On the Appointment of Suleiman As Vice President

    Only a few days after the start of the revolution, the regime is beginning to take desperate measures. Appointing Omar Suleiman as vice president means telling everybody that Hosni Mubarak is over and out and that Gamal Mubarak will never be president. At the same time it means telling the people that Suleiman, the man […]

  • Mubarak Addresses the Egyptian People

    Mubarak: Leave, stay, leave, stay, leave, stay. . . . God damn you, Zine Ben Ali. May you burn in hell. It’s impossible to fix things now. Damn it. I think I’ll go make a speech — maybe things will quiet down a little.