(By Andrea Germanos) As part of their arsenal of spying tools, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, are sucking up personal data leaked from smartphone apps, according to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. One of the apps the NSA and GCHQ used to gather data is the popular game […]
Archives for January 2014
Edward Snowden Interview: NSA is Engaged in Industrial Espionage for Interests, not Security
Via Liveleak: German Television does first Edward Snowden Interview
The 18th Brumaire of Gen. al-Sisi in Egypt
(By Juan Cole) On Monday, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) announced that Field Marshall Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (also the minister of defense) was free to run for president if his conscience led him to do so. There had been a question whether the officers wanted him to get directly involved in politics. […]
Using up Everything Fast: Extractive Capitalism, Sealing and Muslim Slaves in Latin America
(By Greg Grandin) The Two Faces of Empire Melville Knew Them, We Still Live With Them By Greg Grandin A captain ready to drive himself and all around him to ruin in the hunt for a white whale. It’s a well-known story, and over the years, mad Ahab in Herman Melville’s most famous novel, Moby-Dick, […]
Is Iran Back? Foreign Policy after the Nuclear Deal
(By Paul Rogers) Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif with EU High Representative Catherine Ashton at the EU+3 and Iran talks, November 2013 Summary If Iran and the P5+1 succeed in negotiating a robust agreement on the nuclear issue, then Iran will be less preoccupied with rebalancing its relationship with antagonistic western powers and its role […]
The Future of Cool: Electric Muscle Cars at the Detroit Auto Show
(By Juan Cole) I dropped by the Detroit Auto Show this weekend (its last this year) at Cobo Center as it was wrapping up. Regular readers know that I am a big fan of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, so I had a lot of fun window shopping and fantasizing. I have a Chevy Volt […]
Israeli PM Netanyahu faces Zionist Racism from Son dating Norwegian
(By Juan Cole) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is caught in a firestorm of controversy because his son Yair, 23, is dating a Norwegian woman whom he met while she was studying at university in Israel. Ordinarily I would not want to bring up a story like this, since poor Yair is not a politician […]
Turkish PM Erdoğan: Turkey rejects false prophets
Turkish PM Erdoğan has described Islamic Scholar Fethullah Gülen as a ‘false prophet’ without naming him, which comes as the latest move in the dispute between the government and the Gülen’s Movement
The Human Cost of Income Inequality in America
BBC: “What does Income Inequality mean for Americans?”