cpac

"I feel reborn," says Egyptian feminist author and activist Nawal El Saadawi. "I am 80, but I feel young, I feel all my energy coming back, I feel my childhood dream coming back." The revolution in Egypt has inspired people across the world, and we talk to Nawal today to find out why she thinks the successful removal of the Mubarak regime is the culimation of a movement to change the entire structure of Egyptian capitalist, patriarchal politics. "The US has to go back to the drawing board," says legendary journalist Helen Thomas of US policy in the Middle East and North Africa. As Egypt throws off its regime and protests ripple across the region, she notes that the world is waking up to the fact that people under repressive dictatorships can and will fight back--and use nonviolence to achieve their aims rather than invasion. We check in with the longest-serving White House correspondent to discuss revolution, and why she's not done fighting. Meanwhile back at home, the Conservative Political Action Conference is a good place, says Sarah Posner, to "put your finger on the pulse of the conservative movement" in the US. From straw polls for president--Congressman Ron Paul won that one--to tiffs over gay conservatives and Islamophobia, this past weekend at CPAC saw a lot of action, and Sarah was there to report, for Religion Dispatches and The Nation. Sarah joins us via Skype to give us a rundown of the good, the bad, and the unintentionally hilarious--from Ann Coulter's declaration of support for GOProud to Dick Cheney's run-in with a heckler or two. And while people are drawing different lessons from the Egyptian revolution, Nicholas Kristof notes that one of the biggest is to listen to the powerless, not the powerful. And Laura looks at a few stories of the relatively powerless--the workers--being ignored right here at home. Distributed by Tubemogul.