• The Honduran coup d’etat – The Big Picture – Boston.com

  Fantastic pictures!

  tags: Honduras, Photography, Resistance, Military, Coup

• Daily News Egypt – El-Badeel staff start sit-in as weekly edition axed

  tags: El-Badeel, Egypt, Media, Left, Sit-in

• Daily News Egypt – Muslim Brotherhood will not challenge succession

  tags: Egypt, MuslimBrothers, Mubarak, تعريص

• اليوم السابع | حفظ التحقيقات فى قضية قتلى ومصابى 6 أبريل

  tags: Mahalla, April, Detainees, humanrights, Egypt, Police, Dictatorship

• Israel sends subs through Suez Canal | Israel | Jerusalem Post

  tags: Iran, Israeli, Mubarak, Egypt, Military, Suez, Canal, A7a

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Egypt: Hyper Military Society

  tags: Egypt, Army, Military, Dictatorship

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Flash: Taiwan and Israel

  tags: Honduras, Israel, Taiwan, dirtywar

• Israeli sub sails Suez, signaling reach to Iran | Reuters

  tags: Iran, Israel, Egypt, Military

• Coup? Israelis in Honduras say they aren’t worried – Israel News, Ynetnews

  tags: Israel, Honduras, dirtywar

• Mossad Might Be Implicated in Honduras Military Coup

  tags: Israel, Honduras, Military

  • Venezuelan deputy Adel El Zabayar revealed Thursday the implication of Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) in the perpetrated coup d’Etat last Sunday against Honduran constitutional President Manuel Zelaya.
  • Two weeks before the action Israeli diplomacy was active among representatives of the opposition in Honduras, mainly the sector represented by facto ruler, Roberto Micheletti, stated the Venezuelan deputy in an interview with Prensa Latina.
  • “The Embassy of Israel was the scenario of intense diplomatic movement with important representatives of the opposition, including Micheletti,” he emphasized.

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: She will not be famous like Neda

  tags: Iran, Palestine, Media

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The New York Times Continues to Justify the Honduran Coup

  tags: Honduras, NYT, dirtywar

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Al-Masri Al-Yawm

  tags: Egypt, Media, Gamal, Mubarak

• Does the US back the Honduran coup? | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

  tags: Honduras, USA, dirtywar, Military, Pimplomacy

  • The first statement from the White House in response to the coup was weak and non-committal. It did not denounce the coup but rather called upon “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter”.
  • Later in the day, as the response of other nations became clear, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton issued a stronger statement that condemned the coup – without calling it a coup. But it still didn’t say anything about Zelaya returning to the presidency.
  • The strong stances from the south brought statements from anonymous state department officials that were more supportive of Zelaya’s return. And by Monday afternoon President Barack Obama finally said: “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.“
  • But at a press conference later that day, Clinton was asked whether “restoring the constitutional order” in Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself. She would not say yes.
  • By contrast, one reason for Clinton’s reluctance to call the coup a coup is because the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits funds going to governments where the head of state has been deposed by a military coup.
  • Unconditional is also a key word here: the Obama administration may want to extract concessions from Zelaya as part of a deal for his return to office. But this is not how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his political opponents after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the right to extract political concession from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun.
  • Many press reports have contrasted the Obama administration’s rejection of the Honduran coup with the Bush administration’s initial support for the 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. But actually there are more similarities than differences between the US response to these two events.
  • Within a day, the Bush administration reversed its official position on the Venezuelan coup, because the rest of the hemisphere had announced that it would not recognise the coup government. Similarly, in this case, the Obama administration is following the rest of the hemisphere, trying not to be the odd man out but at the same time not really sharing their commitment to democracy.
  • It was not until some months after the Venezuelan coup that the state department admitted that it had given financial and other support “to individuals and organisations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chávez government.”
  • In this case, Washington has a very close relationship with the Honduran military, which goes back decades. During the 1980s, the US used bases in Honduras to train and arm the Contras, Nicaraguan paramilitaries who became known for their atrocities in their war against the Sandinista government in neighbouring Nicaragua.
  • So Clinton will probably not have that much room to manoeuvre. Still, the administration’s ambivalence will be noticed in Honduras and can very likely encourage the de facto government there to try and hang on to power. That could be very damaging.

• Twittered out of trouble | The Arabist

  tags: Twitter, Activism, Egypt

• بوبيسكو يعترف : كنت مرشدا للحكومة! – بوابة الشروق

  شوبير رومانيا؟

  tags: Romania, Police, Dictatorship, Sports

• Islamic Superheroes: will they be banned in France? « Bikya Masr

  tags: Comics, Islam

• State Department Grant for News Website Targeting Iran | Between the Lines

  tags: Iran, USA, Imperialism

• BM News: Egyptian woman stabbed to death in Germany as a result of veil « Bikya Masr

  tags: Egypt, Germany, Veil, Islam, Racism, Murder

• SHE2I2: Egyptian Court Upholds Comic Book Ban

  tags: Egypt, Comics, Censorship

• Egypt: See no strikes, hear no strikes, report no strikes | Menassat

  tags: Workers, Egypt, Tanta, Flax, Strikes, Media, Police, Pigs

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• Unions on Twitter | Creative Unions

  tags: Twitter, Unions, Workers, Activism, Media

  • 1) Set up your website to receive incoming RSS feeds from the picket lines or other major events like conferences.
    2) Labor leaders can twitter their daily activities to keep members apprised of what leadership is working on and fighting for.
    3) If you don’t have time or staff to write quality blog posts, use twitter to keep the community up to date on the issues and concerns of your union.
    4) Set up a bogus Twitter account using the name of a hated CEO or manager. Post entertaining items like “Don’t know why our workers are so upset at my salary. Don’t think they realize all the maintenance needed on 100 foot yachts.”
    5) Post up the minute bargaining updates to the website right from the bargaining table.

• حوار مع المناضل الاشتراكي أليكس كالينيكوس مدير مركز الدراسات الأوروبية بالكلية الملكية في لندن | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

  tags: Left, trotskyism, SWP, Socialists

• إطلاق اسم جمال مبارك على ميدان بقرية الزرابي بأسيوط – بوابة الشروق

  يعني مش عارف أعيط ولا أضحك.. إيه التعريص العلني ده؟

  tags: تعريص, A7a, Gamal, Mubarak, Egypt, NDP

• عمال البريد.. معركة جديدة من أجل التغيير | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

  tags: Egypt, Postal, Workers, FreeUnion, Strikes

• البريد المصري ونظام السخرة | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

  tags: Egypt, Postal, Workers, Strikes

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• قيادات عمالية تشكل اللجنة التحضيرية للعمال | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

  tags: Egypt, Workers, التحضيرية, اللجنة

• عمال طنطا للكتان يطالبون بتأميم الشركة | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

  tags: Workers, Strikes, Egypt, Tanta, Flax, Oil

• Daily News Egypt – More than 300 Shia Egyptians arrested

  tags: Egypt, Shiites, Detainees, HumanRights, Pigs, Police

• Daily News Egypt – Journalist prevented from covering Tanta factory strike

  tags: Egypt, Media, Tanta, Flax, Workers, Strikes, HumanRights, police, pigs

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The New York Times Makes the case Against Zelaya

  tags: Honduras, Media, NYT

• The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Al-Masri Al-Yawm

  tags: Media, Egypt

• Esam Al-Amin: Iran and Washington’s Hidden Hand

  tags: Iran, USA, Imperialism

  • The following day, Khazali was prominently interviewed and hailed by the Voice of America’s Persian language broadcast. The VOA claims that its broadcast reaches 15 million Iranians. Other Iranian opposition groups complained that the VOA  had adopted a policy of supporting the reformist candidates, and had disregarded those who called for a boycott of the elections to deny the regime legitimacy.
  • According to Saeed Behbahani, a fierce critic of the current Iranian regime, and founder of Mihan TV outside Washington D.C., the American administration exchanged messages with the campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi in early June. He claims that, at that time, an unidentified Iranian-American businessman, who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai.
  • The overt involvement of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other U.S. Government-funded NGOs in supporting many of the groups and dissidents that led the colored and flowering “revolutions,” is also well documented. The Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia), Tulip (Kyrgyzstan), Cedar (Lebanon), Saffron (Burma) and now Green (Iran) “revolutions” have involved mostly pro-Western groups or Western-favored individuals against nationalists.
  • Part of the CIA program, as reported by ABC News and the Daily Telegraph, was “supplying money and weapons, to the militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan.” Since 2007, Iranian officials have announced the capture of dozens of members of violent groups, allegedly tied to the CIA, that carried out bombings around the nation including one that killed 20 people only two weeks prior to the recent elections, on May 30, 2009. The following day, another bombing took place at a campaign office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  • On May 24, 2007, Brian Ross, ABC News’s Chief Investigative Correspondent broke a story about the elements of soft power utilized by the CIA and authorized by Bush. “Current and former intelligence officials told ABC News that the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount what is known as a black or covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime, and it is underway,” he reported.  He then added, “Those officials describe the Iranian plan as non-lethal involving a campaign of coordinated propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative newspaper articles, the manipulation of Iran’s currency and international banking transactions.” The ABC correspondent stated, “Propaganda was one of the most important tools utilized by the CIA.”
  • Between 2005-2009, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $400 million for State Department programs designed to “promote democracy,” among other means of employing soft power in Iran. This was implemented, in part, by funding the activities of Iranian dissident groups. By 2008, Congress included money in the budget that would specifically “go to software programmers to develop programs that thwart internet firewalls erected by the government of Iran, ” and for a program to “provide anti-censorship tools and services for the advancement of information freedom in closed societies.”

• الأخبار - جولة الصحافة - ثورة تويتر.. أحلام أميركا في إيران

  tags: Iran, Twitter, Media, Elections

• Egypt and beyond: Police repression of journalists in Tanta

  tags: Tanta, Flax, Workers, Strikes, Police, Pigs, HumanRights, Media

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