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HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'Egypt'
Fifteen months after millions of Egyptians -led by the revolutionary youth- were united in their demand to end a corrupt and suffocating dictatorship, they were now divided as they headed to the polls in the last two days in order to elect a new president. During this tra...
The military was the lone Hosni Mubarak-era institution to survive the revolution that toppled the country’s longest-reigning dictator last year. It remains the real power to this day and is skillfully orchestrating the May 23-24 presidential elections to paint a democr...
Ever since the toppling of Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak, the United States has been very nervous with regard to its former client state. Likewise, most Israeli leaders have been sounding the alarms, warning that the peace treaty with Egypt is in danger and that...
Vijay Prashad’s new book, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter ...
Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time. Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2...
Beirut.
The Egyptian people are demanding the return of their sovereignty. According to recent opinion surveys they believe it was partially ceded to Israel by the two post-Nasser dictators, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, at the behest of American admin...
“President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from his position as president of the republic.” Uttered by former Vice President Omar Suleiman on the evening of February 11, 2011, these words set in motion jubilations by millions of Egyptians celebrating the ultima...
Within the first few months of 2011, the U.S. and its allies lost three loyal “friends”: Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Saad Hariri in Lebanon. While Mubarak and Ali were driven out of power by widespread popular uprisings, Hariri was ...
The two best organized forces in Egypt today remain the military and Islamist organizations. They have been quite successful in leveraging their advanced organization to assert control of the government from the day dictator Hosni Mubarak was pushed aside on February 11, ...
Who shall doubt “the secret hid
Under Cheop’s pyramid”
Was that the contractors did
Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph’s sudden rise
To Comp...
Cairo
It is a gun battle people in the Shubra district in central Cairo still talk about six months after it happened. In a dispute over a piece of land he had seized amid the small shops and densely crowded streets, Mohammed Shaban, who had escaped from p...
Confronted with popular protest, the country’s unelected rulers have doubled down on repression, jailing peaceful activists and killing dozens of civilians who have the gall to exercise their rights. Those who state security forces haven’t killed for demanding...
The last twenty or so months have certainly been months of insurrection. This is perhaps no truer anywhere on earth than in the Middle East and northern Africa. Indeed, there is even a phrase describing this fact. That phrase is “the Arab Spring.” Exactly what...
Cairo
The death of Pope Shenouda, who led Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church for 40 years, has increased fears among Copts that they will face persecution and discrimination as Islamic parties become more powerful.
Hundreds of thousands of mourn...
The US-Egypt relationship is on the rocks. If it is to be salvaged, both sides will need to change course and pay attention to the concerns of their respective publics, both of whom now hold negative views of each other.
In the year that has passed since massive an...
Moscow
Here in Moscow I recently received a dark-blue folder dated 1975. It contains one of the most well-buried secrets of Middle Eastern and of US diplomacy. The secret file, written by the Soviet Ambassador in Cairo, Vladimir M. Vinogradov, apparently a...
Egyptians immediately recognized vivid symbolism few others understood in the soccer riot that broke out recently in the coastal city of Port Said.
First, the killing of 74 Ultras, fans of the Cairo team al-Ahly, occurred on the February 1 one-year anniversary of t...
I have to laugh when I see the International Republican Institute (IRI) described by the international media as an organization that “...
When the youth took to the streets on 25 January 2011, a full-fledged revolution was to follow, but no one knew at the time. No one knew that the frustration with the old regime was irreversible. No one knew that the river of discontent had broken its banks. As endless th...
Cairo
The most populated country in the Arab world took the day off on Wednesday, January 25.
Tahrir Square was overloaded with people stretching and squeezing into every nook and cranny on adjacent streets, storefront alcoves and building doorways...
THE IMPOSSIBLE has happened. The Egyptian parliament, democratically elected by a free people, has convened for its first session.
For me this is a wonderful, a joyful occasion.
For many Israelis, this is a worrisome, a threatening sight.
I CANNOT but...
January 25 marked the one-year anniversary of the inception of Egypt’s revolution against the dictatorship of the Mubarak regime, eleven days after the success of the Tunisian revolution, when its former president Ben Ali fled the country. Within weeks of the brisk succ...
1 January : Egypt wakes to news of the attack on the Two Saints Church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve. Twenty Copts are killed as well as the church’s Muslim police guard. More than 100 are injured. No group claims responsibility.
...
“The Egyptian voices will be heard, and if not heard, it will be only because the blood already shed has not been enough…”
With these words, Saad Zaghloul, one of 20th century Egypt’s most celebrated nati...
Cairo.
One year ago in February 2011, getting to Egypt wasn’t that easy.
Back then, my London flight crew suddenly refused, in midair, to lay over in Cairo. Instead, we touched down in Athens where the airline did not actually even have...