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Archives for June 2013

Domestic Surveillance
Top Ten Ways the Beltway Press will treat Gen. Cartwright differently from Snowden

Top Ten Ways the Beltway Press will treat Gen. Cartwright differently from Snowden

Juan Cole

NBC reports that Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright is under investigation as the source for David Sanger’s 2012 New York Times article revealing that the United States is behind the Stuxnet computer virus, which was used to infect computers at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facilities and at the Bushehr nuclear energy plants and delay their going […]

Domestic Surveillance
The Other Face of Gov’t Surveillance: Informers, Saboteurs and Entrapment Artists (Gitlin)

The Other Face of Gov’t Surveillance: Informers, Saboteurs and Entrapment Artists (Gitlin)

Juan Cole

Todd Gitlin writes at Tomdispatch.com Only Martians, by now, are unaware of the phone and online data scooped up by the National Security Agency (though if it turns out that they are aware, the NSA has surely picked up their signals and crunched their metadata).  American high-tech surveillance is not, however, the only kind around.  […]

Africa
Goree, Senegal's Notorious Slave Island (Video) (President Obama's Itinerary)

Goree, Senegal’s Notorious Slave Island (Video) (President Obama’s Itinerary)

Juan Cole

Here is a UNESCO documentary on Gorée, the Slave Island off Senegal,: which President Obama and his family are visiting during their visit to that country. Although the island was itself a relatively minor point of departure for slaves, who were more often sent off from St. Louis to the north, it stands as a […]

Domestic Surveillance
Germans Vigorously Protest Massive British/ NSA Spying on Email, Telephone Calls

Germans Vigorously Protest Massive British/ NSA Spying on Email, Telephone Calls

Juan Cole

The German government has demanded answers from the British state with regard to revelations by Edward Snowden that the British spy agency GCHQ has a program called Tempora that allows it to capture massive amounts of telephone calls and email from transatlantic fiber optic cables that land first in the UK before they extend to […]

Tunisia
Under European Pressure, Tunisia suspends Sentence of 3 Protesters who Bared Breasts

Under European Pressure, Tunisia suspends Sentence of 3 Protesters who Bared Breasts

Juan Cole

A Tunisian court has given suspended sentences to three European members of Femen (2 French, 1 German) who had bared their breasts in public to protest the jailing of a Tunisian woman who had made her statement in the same way. They had been found guilty of public indecency and sentenced to four months in […]

Egypt
Egypt: Morsi Fails to Appease Critics as Violence breaks out in Provinces

Egypt: Morsi Fails to Appease Critics as Violence breaks out in Provinces

Juan Cole

Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi gave a major speech on Wednesday, commemorating his first year in office and attempting to mollify his political opposition, which is planning to try to unseat him with massive street demonstrations on June 30. A defiant Morsi criticized the opposition and the judges and asked that criminal investigation be launched into […]

Domestic Surveillance
Correa on Smearing of Snowden:  “The World Order is not only unjust, it is immoral”

Correa on Smearing of Snowden: “The World Order is not only unjust, it is immoral”

Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center gives highlights from the Ecuadorean press on the issue of asylum for Edward Snowden. It includes a translation of President Rafael Correa’s tweet slamming the Washington Post and other US media for making Snowden the issue rather than reporting on the NSA abuses he revealed Ecuador Media Watch: USG Making […]

US politics
Did the Supreme Court strike down DOMA because it was Theocratic?

Did the Supreme Court strike down DOMA because it was Theocratic?

Juan Cole

The Supreme Court decision authored by Justice Kennedy spends a lot of time arguing that marriage is a matter for the states to regulate, and that the Federal intervention to punish a class of people (married gays) that the states wish to protect is too wide-ranging to survive. The decision also invokes the 5th Amendment, […]

al-Qaeda
Texas Near-Ban on Abortion foiled by People's 'Gallery Filibuster'

Texas Near-Ban on Abortion foiled by People’s ‘Gallery Filibuster’

Juan Cole

This is the “gallery filibuster” — shouting by pro-choice advocates in the Senate halls after Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis’s filibuster was shut down– that so delayed the vote on a proposed law virtually banning abortion in Texas that it took place too late to be valid. Video of the ‘Gallery filibuster: After a marathon filibuster […]

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