Massive protests have forced the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Asad to lift the state of emergency that has governed the country since 1963. Without the emergency laws, which permit arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, Syria would be governed by the 1973 constitution, including these articles: ‘Article 38 [Expression] Every citizen has the right to freely and […]
Bush’s Pre-War Iraq Oil Deals Alarmed BP
George W. Bush was quietly approaching US petroleum corporations and trying to do deals with the French and Russian governments and their energy companies regarding Iraqi petroleum fields in fall of 2002, according to British government documents. BP learned of these secret negotiations, and arranged for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Trade Minister, Lady Elizabeth Symons, […]
Starship Amerika and Obama’s GPS Surveillance (Cole in Truthdig)
My column in Truthdig is out: “Starship Amerika.” Excerpt: ‘President Barack Obama is actually siding with police who want to use GPS devices to track you without a warrant. It always disturbed me when on “Star Trek” the captain asked the ship’s computer where a crew member was and was told the person’s exact location. […]
Saif admits Qaddafis are Brutal Foreign Occupiers
Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of the dictator, gave an interview yesterday to the Washington Post. In it he justified the Libyan army’s horrific attacks on the besieged city of Misrata: ‘ “You know what happened in Misurata? It’s exactly what happened in the Cold River [Nahr al-Bared], in Tripoli, Lebanon. The Lebanese army went and […]
Israeli Soldiers’ Brutality at Prison Camp for Palestinians
Israeli television has shown shocking cellphone video of the October, 2007, actions at Ketziot Prison, against unarmed Palestinian prisoners, by Israeli security forces. The thousand or so prisoners there revolted at a provocative search abruptly conducted by “Control and Restraint” units or Metzada. Far from being menacing, the Palestinian prisoners are shown cringing and obeying […]
Informed Comment & Big Blog on Campus
Pamela Paul includes Informed Comment in her Sunday NYT piece, “Big Blog on Campus.” Favorite line from her interview with me: “Good blogging involves attitude and snark.” Now if only I finally got that sweater with the letter on it. —- PS: It is already a little dated, especially on developments in Egypt, but my […]
Saving What’s Left of the Constitution
Hmm. Somehow I missed this one. The American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the US government under George W. Bush regarding surveillance of phone calls made and emails sent overseas by US citizens was reinstated last month by an appeals court. The suit began because of the revelation that the National Security Agency had been […]
Egypt’s Ruling Party Dissolved
A special administrative high court in charge of ruling on Egyptian political party affairs on Saturday declared the former ruling party, the National Democratic Party, to be defunct. For Egypt, a major opinion leader in the Arab world and a country with a fourth of all Arabs, to move to multi-party democracy is a world-historic […]
Yemeni Women: “We Will not be Silent!”
Oh no he di’n’t! Thousands of Yemeni women demonstrated against President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Saturday in Sanaa and Taizz, saying “We will not be silent!” They were protesting his complaint on Friday that there was gender mixing in the public rallies, which he said was contrary to Muslim culture, and his call for them […]
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