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Juan Cole

Iran
Qatar Press Condemns Hizbullah Intervention in Syria (Without Irony)

Qatar Press Condemns Hizbullah Intervention in Syria (Without Irony)

Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center translates or paraphrases reactions in the Qatari Arabic press to the Lebanese Shiite organization, Hizbullah, having successfully intervened in Syria to help the Baath regime retake the town of Qusair. Qatar has been a major backer of the largely Sunni Arab rebels. Qatari Newspapers Condemn Hizballah’s Involvement in Syrian Crisis […]

Human Rights
Chinese Humorists Satirize the Snowden/ NSA Surveillance Scandal (Video)

Chinese Humorists Satirize the Snowden/ NSA Surveillance Scandal (Video)

Juan Cole

Next Media Animation (a Taiwanese subsidiary of a Hong Kong firm) satirizes the Snowden/ NSA surveillance scandal by cartoon (English subtitles):

Uncategorized
Sunni-Shiite Conflict Spikes as al-Qaeda Massacres 60 Shiites, Gulf States Sanction Hizbullah

Sunni-Shiite Conflict Spikes as al-Qaeda Massacres 60 Shiites, Gulf States Sanction Hizbullah

Juan Cole

A massacre of Shiite militiamen and other villagers by al-Qaeda in Hatla, Deir al-Zor, Syria, is sending shock waves through the Middle East, which has already witnessed a sharpening of conflict between Sunni Muslims and their Shiite neighbors in recent years. This video of the al-Qaeda types exulting over the cadavers of the dead Shiites […]

US politics
Who you Call is Far more Revealing than what you Say: Landau on Gov’t Spying (Democracy Now!)

Who you Call is Far more Revealing than what you Say: Landau on Gov’t Spying (Democracy Now!)

Juan Cole

Democracy Now! interviews Susan Landau, mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer, author of the book Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. Excerpt from the transcript: “This may surprise many people, this point that metadata—just, you know, the fact of a phone call, who you called, perhaps where you made the call—can […]

al-Qaeda
NSA Leads come from others’ police work, not from data mining: the case of Headley (Rotella)

NSA Leads come from others’ police work, not from data mining: the case of Headley (Rotella)

Juan Cole

Sebastian Rotella writes at ProPublica June 12: This story has been updated with NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander’s Senate testimony on surveillance. Defending a vast program to sweep up phone and Internet data under antiterror laws, senior U.S. officials in recent days have cited the case of David Coleman Headley, a key plotter in the […]

US politics
Sen. Rand Paul:  Snowden's 'Civil Disobedience' seeks "to defend the Fourth Amendment"

Sen. Rand Paul: Snowden’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ seeks “to defend the Fourth Amendment”

Juan Cole

Sen. Rand Paul pushes back against the National Security Agency and its massive surveillance of telephone records, in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN. He pledges to introduce legislation forbidding “generalized warrants,” which he believes are already unconstitutional. He also contrasted the less than truthful testimony before Congress of the Director of National Intelligence […]

Uncategorized
You are the Terrorist (Video)

You are the Terrorist (Video)

Juan Cole

“You are the Terrorist” German with English subtitles; chilling.

Turkey
Learning the Wrong Lessons from Tahrir Square:  Erdogan Assaults Taksim in bid to break up Protests

Learning the Wrong Lessons from Tahrir Square: Erdogan Assaults Taksim in bid to break up Protests

Juan Cole

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday launched an assault on the demonstrators in Taksim Square. It was a puzzling and desperate act, which threatened to undo many of his impressive accomplishments. Why? The cover story was that a small set of violent groups took advantage of the protest to attack police with molotov cocktails. […]

Afghanistan
The Government Endangered us with Foreign Quagmires; it’s the Bradley Mannings that might keep us safe (Madar)

The Government Endangered us with Foreign Quagmires; it’s the Bradley Mannings that might keep us safe (Madar)

Juan Cole

Chase Madar writes at Tomdispatch.com The prosecution of Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks’ source inside the U.S. Army, will be pulling out all the stops when it calls to the stand a member of Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden.  The SEAL (in partial disguise, as his identity is secret) is expected to tell […]

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