February 2011
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WatchA 1981 NBC Nightly News report on Mubarak’s first day in office following the assassination of Anwar Sadat:
“Within a few hours of the shooting, the shattered and shocked Egyptian leadership gathered to name someone to take Sadat’s place, at least for awhile.”
Thirty years later…
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January 2011
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What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt →
The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters-few of whom speak Arabic or have...
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“I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent...”
– Obama’s 2009 Speech in Cairo (video)
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“He’s right that the conversation is ahead of the White House. But that’s not...”
– Peter Feld re: this
How is this lost on everyone criticizing Obama for not taking a clear side?
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“The current popular unrest in the Arab world has a lot of lessons for...”
– Michael Hirsh for the National Journal: The WikiLeaks Revolt
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The Atlantic: What's at Stake in Cairo →
Let’s be quite clear: If the military opens fire in the streets of Cairo, as militaries sometimes do when dictators feel the wheels coming off - consider Hafez al-Assad killing 20,000 Syrians in Hama, in 1982, or Saddam’s 1988 Halabja massacre, or Mubarak’s own three week siege of Cairo’s Imbaba district, in 1992 - their deaths will have been financed by U.S. tax dollars.
...
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Meet Egypt's New Vice President →
Omar Suleiman, Hosni Mubarak’s intelligence chief, is the keeper of Egypt’s and the president’s secrets, a behind-the-scenes operator who has been intimately involved in the most sensitive issues of national security and foreign policy for nearly 20 years.
Suleiman’s appointment as vice-president carries two highly significant messages: for the first time since coming to...
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Biden: Mubarak Should Not Step Down
Vice President Biden, issuing the Obama administration’s most definitive statement to date on the turmoil in Egypt, said President Mubarak should not step down and downplayed the protests spreading across the Mideast as generally unconnected.
He described the unrest as an expression of “middle-class folks” looking for “a little more access and a little more opportunity.”
Though the...
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“Mubarak to appoint new Egyptian people tomorrow to make up for the failings of...”
– @avinunu
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“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the...”
– Howard Zinn
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What's the deal with salmon? →
Like many examples of governmental dysfunction, the way salmon are regulated makes more sense when you look at it closely than when you simplify it for a laugh line. The reason fishing for salmon in freshwater and fishing for salmon in saltwater get regulated by different agencies is that it’s the water, not the salmon, being regulated. Brian Palmer explains:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife...
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Say goodbye to the pretty terrorism color system →
Janet Napolitano is expected to announce today that the 9-year-old system will be replaced by the new National Terror Advisory System which will focus on specific threats in geographical areas.
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If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a... →
True, Lockheed Martin doesn’t actually run the U.S. government, but sometimes it seems as if it might as well. After all, it received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone, more than any company in history. It now does work for more than two dozen government agencies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental...
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“Only socialists look directly into the camera.”
– Jeremy Schahill
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“For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide...”
– CQ
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“Breaking tradition, Republicans and Democrats are going to sit together,...”
– Conan