With the bloody attack on protest camps in Cairo, the announcement of a one-month state of emergency across the country, and the authority given to the army to “assist” the police in maintaining law and order, there can no longer be any question that Egypt is once...
Croatia’s Unpopulist Party Wanted No Part of EU
Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989. The Party of Rights in Croatia traces its lineage back to Ante Starcevic, who is sometimes referred to as the father of Croatia. In 1861, when...
Egypt: The Deck Reshuffled (Pt. 3)
Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News. Read Parts 1 and 2. The situation unfolding in Egypt is confusing to many Americans trying to follow the events. A number of questions have emerged in the aftermath of the Mohamed Morsi’s removal from power and...
A Familiar Script in Egypt
Many Egyptians and Western critics of the Muslim Brotherhood welcomed the military coup that recently toppled the country's elected Brotherhood-led government, praising the military for safeguarding secularism and "democracy." This betrays a gross misreading of the...
Beneath the Surface, China Simmers
Not long ago, Chinese authorities detained Xu Zhiyong, a prominent civil rights advocate, for “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place,” despite the fact that he had been under house arrest for over three months. Although the incident comes as little...
Retiring the American Empire
As people near retirement age, they enter the twilight years. Sometimes, they rebel against retirement. They want to keep working. They’re not interested in shuffling out of their office never to return. And if they’re in fact the owner of the workplace, conflicts...
Making Myanmar Work
On May 20, 2013, former general Thein Sein became the first Burmese president to visit the White House in almost 50 years. From a pariah state noted for human rights violations under its brutal military regime, Myanmar turned a corner in 2010-2011 with the release of...
Patriot Act Sponsor James Sensenbrenner — Progressive Champion?
You remember James Sensenbrenner, don’t you? A Republican from Wisconsin, he introduced the Patriot Act in the House of Representatives 42 days after 9/11. Among his other “accomplishments” was authoring the Real ID Act in 2005 and acting as a general thorn in the...
Turkey: Uprising’s Currents Run Deep
For the time being, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—with brutal police tactics that killed four people and injured more than 8,000—appears to have successfully crushed demonstrations aimed at blocking the demolition of Gezi Park in central Istanbul and...
Egypt: The Deck Reshuffled (Pt. 2)
Read Part 1. While media in the United States has focused on the Egyptian uprising that triggered a military-led coup in which the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) led government was dissolved, hardly any media reports here have considered the regional implications of the...