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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'Egypt'
It was former Egyptian President Husni Mubarak who famously said during a 2006 ...
On Sep. 17, 2012, Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, made another appeal to his Egyptian counterpart Hisham Kandil to consider setting up a free trade area between Gaza and Egypt.
The reasonable idea would allow Egypt to support Gaza’...
Melbourne.
The accounts send a shudder down the spine, reports of systematic and orchestrated assaults against women that have taken place in Tahrir Square this year. The incidents are a reminder that nature, in abhorring a vacuum, often fills it with hi...
Cairo.
Tahrir Square is dark, and all of a sudden endlessly sad. There are still countless tents in the middle of the roundabout, banners carried by the wind, even a small and provisory ‘Museum of Revolution’. From time to time one can hear, as if some...
If parties from across all of Egypt’s political spectrum agree on one thing, it’s this: the country is currently witnessing the greatest turmoil since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster and is facing massive upheaval with no end in sight. The unity and resolve displayed by mill...
Cairo.
Entering the third year of the revolt in Egypt, no amount of repression seems able to contain the swelling pressure exploding throughout the country the last several weeks. In fact, protests against the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Moh...
January 29, 2013, Port Said, Egypt.
It is dark, pitch dark, on the streets of Port Said. Small groups of young men are gathering in the center of the city, mostly around burnt out cars. Some are very restless. They shout and gesticulate, furious.
F...
Cairo.
Late this evening, President Mohammad Morsi declared Emergency Law in three provinces around the Suez Canal that are ablaze in protests. He frankly conceded the government was losing control.
The strategic area around the Suez Canal earns the...
Ken Klippenstein: What do you think the significance of the Arab Spring was to Palestinian rights?
Norman Finkelstein: It’s still a work in progress. The results seemed more encouraging in the initial phase than th...
The Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), gets most of the attention these days when discussing Egypt. Criticism flows easily and the FJP’s reputation has definitely been sullied and bloodied because of their numerous sectarian and u...
Are you voting Yes or No on the constitution?
Of course, yes, said a bearded young man in Shoubra while lining up to vote for the referendum.
Have you read the constitution?
No I haven’t but it is enough for me that it employs sharia as the...
The call for a new constitution was a key political demand of the Egyptian people when they overthrew the thirty-year dictatorship of Mubarak. Motivating this was the desire to begin dismantling the repressive bureaucratic state machinery they had suffered under and repla...
December 8 was the day President Muhammad Morsi had chosen two nights earlier during his address to the nation. In his speech, he called for an open dialogue with the opposition and other political parties as they tackled the political crisis engulfing the country since h...
Cairo.
Signs cover over the front of the Constitutional Court at the Maadi Corniche in Cairo. The Muslim Brotherhood sit-in has been here since December 2. The signs read, “The Presidency is a Red Line” and “Morsi is Red Line.” Abdel Fattah, one of...
The complexities of the Arab Spring and the struggle for political freedom throughout the Arab world should not obscure what has now become an absolutely essential understanding for all anti-imperialists: the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the most powerful weapons of the W...
Cairo.
At Tuesday’s protests by the Muslim Brotherhood, defiance is in the air. The Brotherhood’s political vehicle, the Freedom and Justice Party, was out on the streets alongside the Jama’at al-Islamiya and the Salafi Dawah – core elements of the...
The lines are now drawn. Five months ago, when Muhammad Mursi presented himself as a revolutionary to Tahrir, there was still room to conceive that he might take up the principles for which hundreds of Egyptians had given their lives since 25 January 2011 – bread, freed...
Cairo.
“I’m still at work. I’ll be late, maybe by an hour or two,” says a young man to his dad.
When I looked in surprise at him, he winked and asked me to be quiet. It was in Tahrir, the young man was sitting sipping tea and talking on the ...
By the time President Muhammad Morsi issued his Constitutional Decree on November 22, the political battle lines in Egypt had been clearly drawn. One side, mostly comprised the forces of political Islam led by the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the ...
It’s not even a square—it’s really more of a roundabout. And in person, Tahrir Square appears dramatically smaller than the sweeping images broadcast across the globe documenting the unprecedented demonstrations that toppled the seemingly unshakeable Mubarak regime....
Cairo.
Tearful eyes, Noses covered with shawls, hands or Napkins.
People running away coughing, and others giving instructions to put Pepsi or Vinegar on the eyes so they calm down.
Is it a tear gas? It must be more than this: it is “tear e...
And if you see a Muslim Brotherhood member
Coming to the Square,
His Mom’s night will be dark
And he will leave the square unhappy
(Wlaw shufti ikwan gayyilna el meedan
Leilit ummo soda w hayirga3e za3elan...
Ever since the fall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak on that fateful day in February 2011, Egyptian society and its political factions have been sharply divided. On one side is the Islamic parties led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) but also includes the more conservative ...
Egypt will begin to acquire democratic institutions, first a Shura (or Senate), then a Parliament (after new elections), after a Constitution will inevitably be passed with article 2 stating that the source of all law will be ‘the principles of Islamic Sharī‘a’. Th...
There’s a scene at the end of Braveheart when William Wallace was being tortured to death. At the height of torture the executioner paused and tried to convince Wallace to pledge allegiance to the king so that he may die a quick death. He said, “It can all en...