Perhaps 100,000 Egyptians came out on Wednesday in Tahrir Square in Cairo to mark the anniversary of the first massive protest that led to the overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak. There was also a huge crowd in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city. But the gathering was not simply a commemoration. The revolutionary youth used the occasion […]
SOTU and a Destabilized Middle East
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address treated the Middle East at several points, underlining the unusual importance of this region to the United States. Obama began by celebrating the end of the Iraq War and of the presence of US troops in that country. Although Obama might have been open to US forces […]
Graphic of World Military Spending (Iran’s too Small to Show up)
World military spending in 2010. Note that Iran’s is not a big enough proportion of world arms spending to show up on this graph, which doesn’t show countries that are lower than 2% of the global total. Courtesy Democratic Underground.
Mohamed Bouazizi (d. 2011) from Tunisia to San Francisco to SOTU
Graffiti from Mission Street, San Francisco in honor of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation kicked off the Tunisian Revolution, inspired the Tahrir Square demonstrations, and the Arab Spring: OWS San Francisco demonstration, California Street, January 20, 2012 (inspired by the Tahrir Square demonstrations of January 25, 2011, and after in Egypt): Occupy Wall Street in turn […]
Tomgram: William Astore, Confessions of a Recovering Weapons Addict
Perhaps you’ve heard of “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college…
Can Europe’s Oil Boycott Really Sink Iran?
The European Union threatened Iran on Monday with cutting off petroleum imports into the 27 EU member states, and announced sanctions on Iranian banks and some port and other companies. Iran sells 18 percent of its petroleum to Europe, and Greece, Italy and Spain are particularly dependent on it. Europe also sells Iran nearly $12 […]
Tomgram: Ellen Cantarow, An Environmental Occupy Fracks Corporate America
This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains…
Sharp-Elbowed Politics in the New Arab World
What are the big stories in the Arab world today? A newly elected parliament is being seated, and a deposed president is leaving the country. But beyond that, the remarkable thing is that there are any political stories at all. There weren’t, a year and a half ago. The political stories of today are not […]
South Carolina & Gingrich, Egypt & the Muslim Brotherhood
The election results for Egypt’s lower house have been announced, and the Muslim religious parties appear to have gained over 70% of the seats. The Muslim Brotherhood is claiming its Freedom and Justice Party took 47% of the 498 seats in the lower house of parliament. The hard line fundamentalist Nur Party won 29% of […]
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