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. […]
Archives for April 2011
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 […]
The Music of the Libyan Resistance
Libyan rock guitarist Massoud Abu Assir is entertaining Free Libya forces and volunteers not far from the front lines, says AP. I couldn’t find Abu Assir’s video clips, but here are is Benghazi liberation rap via Russia Today : See also this PRI report on the music of the Libyan uprising.
Arab Spring Protests Continue
1. Syria: In the biggest day of protests in Syria so far, tens of thousands of Syrians demonstrated against the Baathist state of Bashar al-Asad on Friday. Large crowds came out in the Douma suburb of Damascus, but were prevented by the tear-gas and the batons of the Syrian police from reaching the center of […]