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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'
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...
This should be a time for the Muslim Brotherhood to savour their election victory. The final results of the parliamentary elections that ended yesterday will determine whether or not its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), secures a majority, ie half the P...
Seoud Omar, a member of the Suez Canal Authority’s workers union, stood for parliamentary election as an independent candidate in Egypt’s port city of Suez. Just a week before the people of Suez went to vote in the second stage of elections on 14 and...
There was an unmistakable hint of triumph in the comments made by Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the elected Hamas government in Gaza, when he was hosted by Mohamed Badie, the supreme guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.Both leaders said what would be expected of...
Of the many novels with settings in Cairo, Albert Cossery’s The Colors of Infamy capture...
If Islamist movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bete noire, Israel.
Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams....
Nine months into the “Arab Spring”, we surveyed public opinion in seven Arab countries and Iran, asking over 6,000 respondents about their primary political concerns and their degree of satisfaction with the pace of change taking place in their countries. What...
A year ago the popular anger that grew into the Arab Spring was first ignited by an impoverished Tunisian fruit and vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set fire to himself after his cart, his sole means of feeding his family, was confiscated by police. Within days, pi...
I decided to wait a couple weeks just to make sure. So far, so good. Citizens went to the polls in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. A plurality of voters threw their support behind Islamist parties. I take a look outside. The sky is still intact.
Still, there is no sho...
As the Arab Spring blossomed and President Obama hesitated about whether to speak out in favor of protesters seeking democratic change in the Greater Middle East, the Pentagon acted decisively. It forged ever deeper ties with some of the most repressive regimes in the r...
Ever since the fall of deposed president Hosni Mubarak last Feb. 11, the unity the Egyptian people had displayed during the previous 18 days has been slowly eroding.
This fracture began to emerge during the nationwide referendum on March 19. Shortly after assuming ...
When former Vice President (and intelligence chief) Omar Suleiman announced on state television last February 11the transfer of power from Hosni Mubarak to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), millions of Egyptians began celebrating in the streets the culminati...
The Kingdom of Qatar in the Persian Gulf, ever vigilant in support of democracy, sent hundreds of soldiers to help Libyan insurgents against the dictator Gaddafi. It based a squadron of attack aircraft in Crete to bomb Gaddafi’s forces, and its military chief stated...
Following Tunisia’s first fair and free elections on 27 October, the Western media responded with a characteristic sense of fear and alarm. For many, it seemed that the ghost of the Islamic menace was back to haunt Western Values throughout the Arab world. The narra...
The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts was launched at the Journalists’ Union 31 October, with a colourful panel of speakers, including Al-Ahram Centre for Political & Strategic Studies Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Al-Naggar, Independent Trade Union head Kamal Abbas,...
A bit over an hour into the five-hour drive across the ferrous red plateau, heading south toward Uganda’s capital Kampala, suddenly, there’s the Nile, a boiling, roiling cataract at this time of year, rain-swollen and ropy and rabid below the bridge that vaults over i...