Human Rights

How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps: 1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year. 2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret 3. Create a class […]

censorship

Levison of Lavabits on FBI gag order: “There’s information I can’t share with my lawyer”

Juan Cole

Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” gets an exclusive interview with Ladar Levison, who closed down his Lavabit encrypted email service rather than comply with Federal demands that he allow it to be monitored. Levison’s plight, whereby he was ordered to do something against his conscience without a warrant and then placed under a gag order not […]

Human Rights

Burma’s Muslims driven into the hands of human traffickers

Juan Cole

While the issue of the mistreatment Rohingya Muslim minority has most involved Burma, it has roiled politics throughout Southeast Asia. Buddhist extremists have persecuted the Rohingya in Burma. In retaliation, a Buddhist monastery in Jakarta was attacked. And, Thailand now stands accused of winking at or being involved in human trafficking of the refugee minority. […]

censorship

Where is our Amsterdam? Lavabits, Snowden & Wikileaks Censorship recall age of Absolutism

Juan Cole

The long struggle against censorship in the 18th century at the time of oppressive kings in Europe involved the hand-copying and circulation of unpublished anonymous manuscripts. Sometimes dangerous or proscribed books were printed in places beyond the reach of the French kings, in Amsterdam or Geneva. The struggle against censorship was not won with the […]

Domestic Surveillance

Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

Juan Cole

In an epic boxing match, we have in one corner 600 pound gorillas like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), head of the House Intelligence Committee that is determined to abet spying on you in your bedroom, and in the other corner we have 98 pound weaklings like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, who are without Rogers’s […]

CIA

Obama Administration Facing Congressional Rebellion, Civil Suits over NSA Surveillance

Juan Cole

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU, among other important civil society organizations, are suing the Federal government over the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional domestic surveillance. The administration is also facing House hearings on the issue. By the way, the argument made by Homeland Security and other such officials that the NSA’s domestic spying could […]

Domestic Surveillance

The End of Dissidents: The National Security State wants a World without Thoreaus (Engelhardt)

Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com It’s hard even to know how to take it in. I mean, what’s really happening? An employee of a private contractor working for the National Security Agency makes off with unknown numbers of files about America’s developing global security state on a thumb drive and four laptop computers, and jumps the nearest plane to Hong […]

Domestic Surveillance

A Century of America’s Imperial Deep State (McCoy)

Juan Cole

Alfred W. McCoy writes at Tomdispatch.com The American surveillance state is now an omnipresent reality, but its deep history is little known and its future little grasped. Edward Snowden’s leaked documents reveal that, in a post-9/11 state of war, the National Security Agency (NSA) was able to create a surveillance system that could secretly monitor […]

Afghanistan

Malala Yousafzai Pleads at UN for Universal Free Schooling for Girls and Boys

Juan Cole

“In her first speech since the Taliban in Pakistan tried to kill her for advocating education for girls, Malala Yousafzai celebrated her 16th birthday on Friday at the United Nations, appealing for compulsory free schooling for all children” [including for girls!] Channel 4 News has video