** Available for Interviews: Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Program, Institute for Policy Studies **
Washington DC – “While the opposition forces have made significant gains in the last several days, Tripoli is going to be a different order of magnitude,” Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies prophetically told Al-Jazeera English over the weekend, as reprinted in the Financial Times on Sunday. As opposition fighters continue to battle with pro-Qaddafi forces in Tripoli, many are questioning what comes next for Libya. Bennis is a scholar and regular commenter on Middle East and UN issues and co-author of the book “Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power.”
“The success of Libya’s uprising will have a great deal to do with the willingness of its leadership to break its dependency on the United States and NATO,” said Bennis in an article on Alternet. She asks, “whether events so far are ultimately a victory for the Libyan people, or for NATO. Given recent models of U.S. and NATO involvement in overthrowing dictatorships, we don’t have a lot of examples of how it can be both.”
“It’s very unclear whether what is happening is more in the interest of the people of Libya or more in the interest of outside powers,” said Bennis on this morning’s Democracy Now! show.
Phyllis Bennis, directs the New Internationalism Project at IPS. She is a regular commentator on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as well as NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include “Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis,” as well as “Ending the Iraq War: A Primer and Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Tuesday, August 23, 2011, 12:15 PM EDT
For interviews with Phyllis Bennis, please contact: Lacy MacAuley, Institute for Policy Studies, (202) 445-4692, lacy@ips-dc.org
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Institute for Policy Studies (www.IPS-DC.org) is a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. We work with social movements to promote true democracy and challenge concentrated wealth, corporate influence, and military power.