Update: Centrist Hassan Rouhani is Iran’s new president, having won a massive victory in a field of 6 candidates. 13:19 ET, 6/15/13 Early election returns in Iran suggest that former National Security adviser and nuclear negotiator Hassan Rouhani may have won over 50% of the vote, in which case he will have won without needing […]
Obama should Resist the Clintons & Europe on Syria
Former president Bill Clinton criticized President Obama on Thursday for his inaction in regard to Syria. This step seems extraordinary and surely has something to do with positioning Hillary Clinton to run as a more hawkish New Democrat against anyone in the Obama circle in 2016. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton appears to have […]
The Emir of Kuwait’s War on Twitter
Kuwait in 2005 was hailed as a budding Arab democracy, with among the freest press in the Arab world. In the aftermath of the 2011 Arab revolutions the government of the Emir began prosecuting critics in the press and even ordinary citizens commenting at blogs or on social media, accusing them of political libel. France24 […]
Qatar Press Condemns Hizbullah Intervention in Syria (Without Irony)
The USG Open Source Center translates or paraphrases reactions in the Qatari Arabic press to the Lebanese Shiite organization, Hizbullah, having successfully intervened in Syria to help the Baath regime retake the town of Qusair. Qatar has been a major backer of the largely Sunni Arab rebels. Qatari Newspapers Condemn Hizballah’s Involvement in Syrian Crisis […]
Chinese Humorists Satirize the Snowden/ NSA Surveillance Scandal (Video)
Next Media Animation (a Taiwanese subsidiary of a Hong Kong firm) satirizes the Snowden/ NSA surveillance scandal by cartoon (English subtitles):
Sunni-Shiite Conflict Spikes as al-Qaeda Massacres 60 Shiites, Gulf States Sanction Hizbullah
A massacre of Shiite militiamen and other villagers by al-Qaeda in Hatla, Deir al-Zor, Syria, is sending shock waves through the Middle East, which has already witnessed a sharpening of conflict between Sunni Muslims and their Shiite neighbors in recent years. This video of the al-Qaeda types exulting over the cadavers of the dead Shiites […]
Who you Call is Far more Revealing than what you Say: Landau on Gov’t Spying (Democracy Now!)
Democracy Now! interviews Susan Landau, mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer, author of the book Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. Excerpt from the transcript: “This may surprise many people, this point that metadata—just, you know, the fact of a phone call, who you called, perhaps where you made the call—can […]
NSA Leads come from others’ police work, not from data mining: the case of Headley (Rotella)
Sebastian Rotella writes at ProPublica June 12: This story has been updated with NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander’s Senate testimony on surveillance. Defending a vast program to sweep up phone and Internet data under antiterror laws, senior U.S. officials in recent days have cited the case of David Coleman Headley, a key plotter in the […]
Sen. Rand Paul: Snowden’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ seeks “to defend the Fourth Amendment”
Sen. Rand Paul pushes back against the National Security Agency and its massive surveillance of telephone records, in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN. He pledges to introduce legislation forbidding “generalized warrants,” which he believes are already unconstitutional. He also contrasted the less than truthful testimony before Congress of the Director of National Intelligence […]
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