(By Sarah Leah Whitson) (Beirut) – Iranians are facing serious rights abuses, despite President Hassan Rouhani’s numerous promises to respect people’s rights following his June 14, 2013, electoral victory, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2014. Authorities have released some prominent political prisoners but executions continued at high rates. Officials continued to […]
Archives for January 2014
Only post-Snowden did FISA Court even Consider if NSA Bulk Phone Collection is Legal
(By Michael Masnick) FISA Court Waited Until After Snowden Leaks To Actually Explore If Bulk Phone Record Collection Was Legal (via Techdirt) One of the most common defenses of the NSA’s bulk phone record collection (in which they get access to the record of basically every phone call in the US) is that the program […]
54 Dead in an Egypt Polarized between pro-Military, anti-Coup on Revolution Anniversary
(by Juan Cole) January 25 marked the third anniversary of the revolution that overthrew dictator Hosni Mubarak, and Egyptians observed it in three distinctively different ways. In the iconic Tahrir Square downtown, thousands of supporters of the military coup of July 3, 2013, gathered for a big party. People never used to dance to patriotic […]
The Real Irony of Rep. Harman being interrupted on NSA Spying by Bieber Bulletin
(By Juan Cole) MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell interrupts former Rep. Jane Harman, speaking on NSA surveillance from Davos, for breaking news about Justin Bieber’s DUI arrest The real irony of interviewing Harman on NSA spying is that, as Ryan Gierach points out, she is both a victim of it and a big defender of it, which […]
Why Tunisia’s Transition to Democracy is Succeeding while Egypt Falters
(By Juan Cole) On Sunday, Tunisia’s parliament will vote on the final text of the new constitution. If it passes by a two-thirds vote, the text will not have to go to a national referendum, but just would become the organic law of the country. The constitution guarantees equal rights for women and wants gender […]
China Installed More Solar Power in 2013 than the US has in its Whole History
(By Joshua S. Hill) China’s Solar Market Beat All Expectations For 2013 (via Clean Technica) Despite predictions all through 2013 suggesting that Japan would walk away the dominant solar PV market, Bloomberg New Energy Finance has revealed that China “outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts” to install a record 12 GW of photovoltaic… ——- […]
Israel’s KKK: Violent Squatters increasingly Attacking Palestinians
(By César Chelala) Increasing acts of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been repeatedly denounced. Together with the increasing number of settlements being built on Palestinian land, those acts of violence betray justice and seriously undermine the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2007, Israeli prosecutors established that […]
Who’s most innovative of all? Not Israel, says Bloomberg
This year’s Global Innovation Quotient furnishes a reality check for the Start-Up Nation
AKP winning perception war
Erdogan has been surprisingly successful in framing the graft probe in his favor, while purging the bureaucracy on an unprecedented scale.
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